Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Elfin Hill, sentence 9
"Who can the strangers be?" asked the lizards; "what can the matter be?
Who acts: lizards · What happens: be, ask · To what, where: matter · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Elfin Hill. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (lizards), 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 | _ | 6 be | punct |
| 2 | Who | who | PRON | PronType=Rel | 6 be | nsubj |
| 3 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 6 be | aux |
| 4 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 5 strangers | det |
| 5 | strangers | stranger | NOUN | Number=Plur | 6 be | nsubj |
| 6 | be | be | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 9 asked | ccomp |
| 7 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 6 be | punct |
| 8 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 6 be | punct |
| 9 | asked | ask | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 10 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 11 lizards | det |
| 11 | lizards | lizard | NOUN | Number=Plur | 9 asked | obj |
| 12 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 18 be | punct |
| 13 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 18 be | punct |
| 14 | what | what | PRON | PronType=Int | 18 be | obj |
| 15 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 18 be | aux |
| 16 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 17 matter | det |
| 17 | matter | matter | NOUN | Number=Sing | 18 be | obl:unmarked |
| 18 | be | be | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 9 asked | conj |
| 19 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 9 asked | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | can in a quote | can | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||||
| 2 | ask speech: ask | past | the lizards | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 3 | can in a quote | can | the lizards not said here | the matter | vn representation-110.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot what=Theme |
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/pg27200/31/9/