Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Goblin and the Huckster, sentence 16

It could only be used by one object at a time, which was a good thing, as a number speaking at once would have caused great confusion.

Who acts: one object, number · What happens: use, be, speak, cause · To what, where: tongue, good thing, great confusion · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Goblin and the Huckster. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (one object, number), 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	It	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	5 used	nsubj:pass
2	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	5 used	aux
3	only	only	ADV	_	5 used	advmod
4	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	5 used	aux:pass
5	used	use	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	root	root
6	by	by	ADP	_	8 object	case
7	one	one	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	8 object	nummod
8	object	object	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 used	obl
9	at	at	ADP	_	11 time	case
10	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	11 time	det
11	time	time	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 object	nmod
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 thing	punct
13	which	which	PRON	PronType=Rel	17 thing	nsubj
14	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	17 thing	cop
15	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	17 thing	det
16	good	good	ADJ	Degree=Pos	17 thing	amod
17	thing	thing	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 object	conj
18	,	,	PUNCT	_	27 caused	punct
19	as	as	SCONJ	_	27 caused	mark
20	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	21 number	det
21	number	number	NOUN	Number=Sing	27 caused	nsubj
22	speaking	speak	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	21 number	acl
23	at	at	ADP	_	24 once	case
24	once	once	ADV	NumForm=Word NumType=Mult	22 speaking	obl
25	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	27 caused	aux
26	have	have	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	27 caused	aux
27	caused	cause	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	5 used	conj
28	great	great	ADJ	Degree=Pos	29 confusion	amod
29	confusion	confusion	NOUN	Number=Sing	27 caused	obj
30	.	.	PUNCT	_	5 used	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	use	could · passive	one object at a time and a good thing	tongue	vn eat-39.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent subject=Patient
2	is a	past	one object at a time and a good thing	a good thing	tree rules
3	speak speech: other	gerund	a number not said here		vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent
4	cause	would · perfect	a number	great confusion	vn engender-27.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Precondition confusion=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.

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