Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Ugly Duckling, sentence 49

"The others are very pretty children," said the old duck, with the rag on her leg, "all but that one; I wish his mother could improve him a little."

Who acts: others, pretty children, mother · What happens: be, say, wish, improve · To what, where: pretty children, old duck, child · 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 (others, pretty children, mother), 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	"	"	PUNCT	_	7 children	punct
2	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	3 others	det
3	others	other	NOUN	Number=Plur	7 children	nsubj
4	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	7 children	cop
5	very	very	ADV	_	6 pretty	advmod
6	pretty	pretty	ADJ	Degree=Pos	7 children	amod
7	children	child	NOUN	Number=Plur	10 said	nsubj
8	,	,	PUNCT	_	7 children	punct
9	"	"	PUNCT	_	7 children	punct
10	said	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
11	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 duck	det
12	old	old	ADJ	Degree=Pos	13 duck	amod
13	duck	duck	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 said	obj
14	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 rag	punct
15	with	with	ADP	_	17 rag	case
16	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	17 rag	det
17	rag	rag	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 duck	conj
18	on	on	ADP	_	20 leg	case
19	her	her	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	20 leg	nmod:poss
20	leg	leg	NOUN	Number=Sing	17 rag	nmod
21	,	,	PUNCT	_	23 all	punct
22	"	"	PUNCT	_	23 all	punct
23	all	all	DET	PronType=Tot	13 duck	conj
24	but	but	CCONJ	_	26 one	cc
25	that	that	SCONJ	_	26 one	mark
26	one	one	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	23 all	conj
27	;	;	PUNCT	_	29 wish	punct
28	I	I	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	29 wish	nsubj
29	wish	wish	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	10 said	ccomp
30	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	31 mother	nmod:poss
31	mother	mother	NOUN	Number=Sing	33 improve	nsubj
32	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	33 improve	aux
33	improve	improve	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	29 wish	ccomp
34	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	33 improve	obj
35	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	36 little	det
36	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	33 improve	obl:unmarked
37	.	.	PUNCT	_	10 said	punct
38	"	"	PUNCT	_	10 said	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	is a in a quote	present	the others	pretty children		tree rules
2	say speech: assert	past	pretty children	the old duck and the rag on duck's leg		tree rules
3	wish in a quote	present	pretty children = child			vn wish-62 «NP V for NP S_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme
4	improve in a quote	could	child's mother	child	a little obl:unmarked	vn other_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent he=Patient

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/pg27200/201/49/