Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Fifteenth Evening, sentence 4

When he was yet a little boy, playing about with other boys, he was already Punch.

Who acts: public, little boy · What happens: be, play about · To what, where: little boy, Punch

This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Fifteenth Evening. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (public, little boy), 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	When	when	SCONJ	_	7 boy	mark
2	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	7 boy	nsubj
3	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	7 boy	cop
4	yet	yet	CCONJ	_	7 boy	cc
5	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	7 boy	det
6	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	7 boy	amod
7	boy	boy	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root
8	,	,	PUNCT	_	9 playing	punct
9	playing	play	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	7 boy	acl
10	about	about	ADV	_	9 playing	advmod
11	with	with	ADP	_	13 boys	case
12	other	other	ADJ	Degree=Pos	13 boys	amod
13	boys	boy	NOUN	Number=Plur	9 playing	obl
14	,	,	PUNCT	_	18 Punch	punct
15	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	18 Punch	nsubj
16	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	18 Punch	cop
17	already	already	ADV	_	18 Punch	advmod
18	Punch	Punch	PROPN	Number=Sing	7 boy	nmod
19	.	.	PUNCT	_	7 boy	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	is a	past	public	a little boy		tree rules
2	play about	gerund	a little boy not said here		with other boys; about property	vn play-114.2-1 «NP V PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent with boy=Co-Agent
3	is a	past	public	Punch		tree rules

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: «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 27200 (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/pg27200/106/4/