Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, IV. Babette, sentence 20

It is not easy to keep such secrets; they are like sand in a sieve; they slip out.

Who acts: secrets · What happens: not be, keep, be, slip out · To what, where: such secrets, sieve

This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, IV. Babette. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (secrets), 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	4 easy	expl
2	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	4 easy	cop
3	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	4 easy	advmod
4	easy	easy	ADJ	Degree=Pos	root	root
5	to	to	PART	_	6 keep	mark
6	keep	keep	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	4 easy	csubj
7	such	such	ADJ	Degree=Pos	8 secrets	amod
8	secrets	secret	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 keep	obj
9	;	;	PUNCT	_	13 sand	punct
10	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	13 sand	nsubj
11	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	13 sand	cop
12	like	like	ADP	_	13 sand	case
13	sand	sand	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 easy	conj
14	in	in	ADP	_	16 sieve	case
15	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	16 sieve	det
16	sieve	sieve	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 sand	nmod
17	;	;	PUNCT	_	19 slip	punct
18	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	19 slip	nsubj
19	slip	slip	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	4 easy	conj
20	out	out	ADP	_	19 slip	compound:prt
21	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 easy	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	not is	present				easy property	tree rules
2	keep	to-infinitive		such secrets			vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent secret=Theme
3	is	present	secrets = secret		a sieve	like sand	tree rules
4	slip out	present	secrets = secret				vn calibratable_cos-45.6.1-1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute

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/pg27200/55/20/