Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Anne Lisbeth, sentence 174
"That was just a chance," people said; but do things happen by chance?
Who acts: That, people, things · What happens: be, say, happen · To what, where: chance · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Anne Lisbeth. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (That, people, things), 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 chance | punct |
| 2 | That | that | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 6 chance | nsubj |
| 3 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 chance | cop |
| 4 | just | just | ADV | _ | 6 chance | advmod |
| 5 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 chance | det |
| 6 | chance | chance | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 said | ccomp |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 6 chance | punct |
| 8 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 6 chance | punct |
| 9 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 10 said | nsubj |
| 10 | said | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 11 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 15 happen | punct |
| 12 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 15 happen | cc |
| 13 | do | do | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 15 happen | aux |
| 14 | things | thing | NOUN | Number=Plur | 15 happen | nsubj |
| 15 | happen | happen | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 10 said | ccomp |
| 16 | by | by | ADP | _ | 17 chance | case |
| 17 | chance | chance | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 happen | obl |
| 18 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 10 said | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a in a quote | past | That | a chance | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | say speech: assert | past | people | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 3 | happen | present · do-support | things | by chance | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme by chance=Location |
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/pg27200/5/174/