Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Portuguese Duck, sentence 18

We can't sing, certainly; but we have a sounding-board, or something of the kind, within us; we can feel that, though we don't talk about it."

Who acts: We · What happens: not sing, have, feel, not talk · To what, where: sounding board, that

This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Portuguese Duck. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (We), 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	We	we	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	4 sing	nsubj
2	ca	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	4 sing	aux
3	n't	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	4 sing	advmod
4	sing	sing	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
5	,	,	PUNCT	_	6 certainly	punct
6	certainly	certainly	ADV	_	4 sing	advmod
7	;	;	PUNCT	_	10 have	punct
8	but	but	CCONJ	_	10 have	cc
9	we	we	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	10 have	nsubj
10	have	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=1 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	4 sing	parataxis
11	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	14 board	det
12	sounding	sounding	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 board	compound
13	-	-	PUNCT	_	12 sounding	punct
14	board	board	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 have	obj
15	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 something	punct
16	or	or	CCONJ	_	17 something	cc
17	something	something	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Ind	10 have	obl
18	of	of	SCONJ	_	20 kind	mark
19	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	20 kind	det
20	kind	kind	ADJ	Degree=Pos	17 something	acl
21	,	,	PUNCT	_	23 us	punct
22	within	within	ADP	_	23 us	case
23	us	we	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	20 kind	obl
24	;	;	PUNCT	_	27 feel	punct
25	we	we	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	27 feel	nsubj
26	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	27 feel	aux
27	feel	feel	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	4 sing	conj
28	that	that	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	27 feel	obj
29	,	,	PUNCT	_	34 talk	punct
30	though	though	SCONJ	_	34 talk	mark
31	we	we	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	34 talk	nsubj
32	do	do	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=1 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	34 talk	aux
33	n't	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	34 talk	advmod
34	talk	talk	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	27 feel	parataxis
35	about	about	ADP	_	36 it	case
36	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	34 talk	obl
37	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 sing	punct
38	"	"	PUNCT	_	4 sing	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	not sing speech: express	can	We		certainly property	vn sound_emission-43.2 «NP.location V PP.theme»: agent=Location
2	have	present	we	a sounding board	something obl	vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent board=Patient
3	feel	can	we	that		vn hunt-35.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent that=Theme
4	not talk	present · do-support	we		about board	vn talk-37.5 «NP V PP.topic»: agent=Agent about it=Topic

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/pg27200/145/18/