Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Ugly Duckling, sentence 173

He had been persecuted and despised for his ugliness, and now he heard them say he was the most beautiful of all the birds.

Who acts: water, swans · What happens: persecute, despise, hear, say, be · To what, where: water, swans · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Ugly Duckling. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (water, swans), 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	He	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 persecuted	nsubj
2	had	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 persecuted	aux
3	been	be	AUX	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	4 persecuted	aux:pass
4	persecuted	persecute	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	root	root
5	and	and	CCONJ	_	6 despised	cc
6	despised	despise	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	4 persecuted	conj
7	for	for	ADP	_	9 ugliness	case
8	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	9 ugliness	nmod:poss
9	ugliness	ugliness	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 despised	obl
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	14 heard	punct
11	and	and	CCONJ	_	14 heard	cc
12	now	now	ADV	PronType=Dem	14 heard	advmod
13	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 heard	nsubj
14	heard	hear	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 persecuted	conj
15	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 heard	obj
16	say	say	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	14 heard	xcomp
17	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 beautiful	nsubj
18	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	21 beautiful	cop
19	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	21 beautiful	det
20	most	most	ADV	Degree=Sup	21 beautiful	advmod
21	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	Degree=Pos	16 say	ccomp
22	of	of	ADP	_	25 birds	case
23	all	all	DET	PronType=Tot	25 birds	det:predet
24	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	25 birds	det
25	birds	bird	NOUN	Number=Plur	21 beautiful	obl
26	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 persecuted	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	persecute	past · perfect · passive		water			vn prosecute-33.2-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient
2	despise	participle				for water's ugliness	vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer for ugliness=Attribute
3	hear	past	water	swans = swan	now		tree rules
4	say speech: assert	infinitive	swans = swan not said here				vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent
5	is	past	water			of all birds; beautiful property	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/pg27200/201/173/