Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Snowdrop, sentence 137

If the houses were asked, they could not answer; but the people would understand, and say, "Certainly the street built his house for him."

Who acts: tailor, people, street · What happens: ask, not answer, understand, say, build · To what, where: houses, house · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Snowdrop. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (tailor, people, street), 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	If	if	SCONJ	_	5 asked	mark
2	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	3 houses	det
3	houses	house	NOUN	Number=Plur	5 asked	nsubj:pass
4	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 asked	aux:pass
5	asked	ask	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	10 answer	advcl
6	,	,	PUNCT	_	5 asked	punct
7	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	10 answer	nsubj
8	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	10 answer	aux
9	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	10 answer	advmod
10	answer	answer	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
11	;	;	PUNCT	_	16 understand	punct
12	but	but	CCONJ	_	16 understand	cc
13	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	14 people	det
14	people	people	NOUN	Number=Plur	16 understand	nsubj
15	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	16 understand	aux
16	understand	understand	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	10 answer	advcl
17	,	,	PUNCT	_	19 say	punct
18	and	and	CCONJ	_	19 say	cc
19	say	say	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	10 answer	conj
20	,	,	PUNCT	_	25 built	punct
21	"	"	PUNCT	_	25 built	punct
22	Certainly	certainly	ADV	_	25 built	advmod
23	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	24 street	det
24	street	street	NOUN	Number=Sing	25 built	nsubj
25	built	build	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	19 say	advcl
26	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	27 house	nmod:poss
27	house	house	NOUN	Number=Sing	25 built	obj
28	for	for	ADP	_	29 him	case
29	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	25 built	obl
30	.	.	PUNCT	_	10 answer	punct
31	"	"	PUNCT	_	10 answer	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	ask speech: ask a condition, not said to happen	past · passive		the houses		vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: subject=Recipient
2	not answer speech: assert	could	tailor			vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
3	understand	would	the people			vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer
4	say speech: assert	infinitive	tailor not said here			vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent
5	build in a quote	past	the street	street's house	for friend; certainly property	vn build-26.1-1 «NP V NP PP.beneficiary»: agent=Agent house=Product for he=Beneficiary

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/pg27200/177/137/