Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid, part 2, sentence 29

Her sisters asked her what she had seen during her first visit to the surface of the water; but she would tell them nothing.

Who acts: sisters, face · What happens: ask, see, tell, visit · To what, where: face, nothing, sisters · Speech: someone speaks here

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 (sisters, face), 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	Her	her	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	2 sisters	nmod:poss
2	sisters	sister	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 asked	nsubj
3	asked	ask	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	her	she	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 asked	iobj
5	what	what	PRON	PronType=Int	8 seen	obj
6	she	she	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	8 seen	nsubj
7	had	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	8 seen	aux
8	seen	see	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	3 asked	ccomp
9	during	during	ADP	_	12 visit	case
10	her	her	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	12 visit	nmod:poss
11	first	first	ADJ	Degree=Pos NumForm=Word NumType=Ord	12 visit	amod
12	visit	visit	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 seen	obl
13	to	to	ADP	_	15 surface	case
14	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	15 surface	det
15	surface	surface	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 visit	nmod
16	of	of	ADP	_	18 water	case
17	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	18 water	det
18	water	water	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 surface	nmod
19	;	;	PUNCT	_	23 tell	punct
20	but	but	CCONJ	_	23 tell	cc
21	she	she	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	23 tell	nsubj
22	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	23 tell	aux
23	tell	tell	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	3 asked	conj
24	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	23 tell	iobj
25	nothing	nothing	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Neg	23 tell	obj
26	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 asked	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	when	other	roles by
1	ask speech: ask	past	face's sisters		face			vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S»: agent=Agent she=Recipient clause=Topic
2	see	past · perfect	face			during face's first visit to the surface of the water		vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer what=Stimulus
3	tell speech: assert	would	face	nothing	sisters = sister			vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent they=Recipient nothing=Topic
4	visit		face				to the surface of the water	nom visit «act transitive»: poss=agent to=obl

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/pg27200/76/29/