Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Water of Life, sentence 4

They told him that their father was very ill, and that they were afraid nothing could save him.

Who acts: sons, father, nothing · What happens: tell, be, save · To what, where: king · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Water of Life. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sons, father, nothing), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher. This tree is Mova's own parse (the en model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

The tree

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	They	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 told	nsubj
2	told	tell	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 told	iobj
4	that	that	SCONJ	_	9 ill	mark
5	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	6 father	nmod:poss
6	father	father	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 ill	nsubj
7	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	9 ill	cop
8	very	very	ADV	_	9 ill	advmod
9	ill	ill	ADJ	Degree=Pos	2 told	advcl
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	18 save	punct
11	and	and	CCONJ	_	18 save	cc
12	that	that	SCONJ	_	15 afraid	mark
13	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	15 afraid	nsubj
14	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	15 afraid	cop
15	afraid	afraid	ADJ	Degree=Pos	18 save	advcl
16	nothing	nothing	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Neg	18 save	nsubj
17	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	18 save	aux
18	save	save	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 told	advcl
19	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	18 save	obj
20	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 told	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	other	roles by
1	tell speech: assert	past	sons = son		king		vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent he=Recipient
2	is	past	sons's father			ill property	tree rules
3	is	past	sons = son			afraid property	tree rules
4	save	could	nothing	king			vn get-13.5.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Theme

One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

Text: «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Project Gutenberg book 2591 (public domain in the USA). Tree: Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/49/4/