Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, First Visit, sentence 17

They could tell us something worth hearing, if they only knew how to talk.

Who acts: fellows · What happens: tell, know, talk · To what, where: something, us · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, First Visit. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fellows), 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	3 tell	nsubj
2	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	3 tell	aux
3	tell	tell	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
4	us	we	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	3 tell	iobj
5	something	something	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Ind	3 tell	obj
6	worth	worth	ADJ	Degree=Pos	7 hearing	amod
7	hearing	hearing	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 something	conj
8	,	,	PUNCT	_	12 knew	punct
9	if	if	SCONJ	_	12 knew	mark
10	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	12 knew	nsubj
11	only	only	ADV	_	12 knew	advmod
12	knew	know	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 tell	parataxis
13	how	how	ADV	PronType=Int	15 talk	advmod
14	to	to	PART	_	15 talk	mark
15	talk	talk	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	12 knew	xcomp
16	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 tell	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	roles by
1	tell speech: assert	could	fellows = fellow	something	us	vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent we=Recipient something=Topic
2	know a condition, not said to happen	past	fellows = fellow			vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus
3	talk	to-infinitive	fellows = fellow not said here			vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent

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/pg27200/136/17/