Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid, part 2, sentence 13

His limbs were failing him, his beautiful eyes were closed, and he would have died had not the little mermaid come to his assistance.

Who acts: limbs, sea, little mermaid · What happens: fail, close, die, have, not come, assist · To what, where: sea, beautiful eyes, assistance

This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Little Mermaid, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (limbs, sea, little mermaid), 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	His	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	2 limbs	nmod:poss
2	limbs	limb	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 failing	nsubj
3	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 failing	aux
4	failing	fail	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	root	root
5	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 failing	obj
6	,	,	PUNCT	_	11 closed	punct
7	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	9 eyes	nmod:poss
8	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	Degree=Pos	9 eyes	amod
9	eyes	eye	NOUN	Number=Plur	11 closed	nsubj:pass
10	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	11 closed	aux:pass
11	closed	close	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	4 failing	parataxis
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 died	punct
13	and	and	CCONJ	_	17 died	cc
14	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	17 died	nsubj
15	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	17 died	aux
16	have	have	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	17 died	aux
17	died	die	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	11 closed	conj
18	had	have	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	17 died	advcl
19	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	23 come	advmod
20	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	22 mermaid	det
21	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	22 mermaid	amod
22	mermaid	mermaid	NOUN	Number=Sing	23 come	nsubj
23	come	come	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	18 had	advcl
24	to	to	ADP	_	26 assistance	case
25	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	26 assistance	nmod:poss
26	assistance	assistance	NOUN	Number=Sing	23 come	obl
27	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 failing	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	roles by
1	fail	past · progressive	sea's limbs	sea		vn succeed-74-3-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Eventuality
2	close	past · passive		sea's beautiful eyes		vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient
3	die	would · perfect	sea			vn calibratable_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute
4	have	participle	sea not said here			vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent
5	not come	infinitive	the little mermaid		sea's assistance	vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial_location»: agent=Theme to assistance=Initial_Location
6	assist		sea			nom assistance «act transitive»: poss=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/pg27200/76/13/