Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Puppet-show Man, sentence 20
But I had the best of it, for there was much in what he did that he could not always explain to me.
Who acts: I, lecturer · What happens: have, be, do, not explain · To what, where: best, me
This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Puppet-show Man. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, lecturer), 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 | But | but | CCONJ | _ | 3 had | cc |
| 2 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 3 had | nsubj |
| 3 | had | have | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 5 best | det |
| 5 | best | good | ADJ | Degree=Sup | 3 had | obj |
| 6 | of | of | ADP | _ | 7 it | case |
| 7 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 5 best | obl |
| 8 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 11 was | punct |
| 9 | for | for | SCONJ | _ | 11 was | mark |
| 10 | there | there | PRON | PronType=Dem | 11 was | expl |
| 11 | was | be | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 3 had | conj |
| 12 | much | much | ADV | _ | 14 what | advmod |
| 13 | in | in | ADP | _ | 14 what | case |
| 14 | what | what | PRON | PronType=Int | 3 had | obj |
| 15 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 16 did | nsubj |
| 16 | did | do | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 14 what | acl:relcl |
| 17 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 22 explain | mark |
| 18 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 22 explain | nsubj |
| 19 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 22 explain | aux |
| 20 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 22 explain | advmod |
| 21 | always | always | ADV | PronType=Tot | 22 explain | advmod |
| 22 | explain | explain | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 16 did | advcl |
| 23 | to | to | ADP | _ | 24 me | case |
| 24 | me | I | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 22 explain | obl |
| 25 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 had | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | have | past | I | the best | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | be | past | I not said here | there | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||
| 3 | do | past | lecturer | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 4 | not explain speech: assert | could | lecturer | me | always property | vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1 «NP V PP.recipient how S»: agent=Agent to i=Recipient |
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/pg27200/152/20/