Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid, part 1, sentence 17
The earth itself was the finest sand, but blue as the flame of burning sulphur.
Who acts: earth, burning sulphur · What happens: be, burn, flame · To what, where: finest sand
This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Little Mermaid, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (earth, burning sulphur), 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 | The | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 2 earth | det |
| 2 | earth | earth | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 sand | nsubj |
| 3 | itself | itself | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Emp Reflex=Yes | 2 earth | nmod:unmarked |
| 4 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 7 sand | cop |
| 5 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 7 sand | det |
| 6 | finest | fine | ADJ | Degree=Sup | 7 sand | amod |
| 7 | sand | sand | NOUN | Number=Sing | root | root |
| 8 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 10 blue | punct |
| 9 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 10 blue | cc |
| 10 | blue | blue | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 7 sand | amod |
| 11 | as | as | ADP | _ | 13 flame | case |
| 12 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 13 flame | det |
| 13 | flame | flame | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 blue | obl |
| 14 | of | of | ADP | _ | 16 sulphur | case |
| 15 | burning | burn | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 16 sulphur | amod |
| 16 | sulphur | sulphur | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 flame | nmod |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 7 sand | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a | past | the earth earth | the finest sand | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | burn | gerund | vn light_emission-43.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||||
| 3 | flame | burning sulphur | nom flame «process intransitive»: of=agent |
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/pg27200/75/17/