Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid, part 2, sentence 63

He would give a soul to you and retain his own as well; but this can never happen.

Who acts: priest, this · What happens: give, retain, not happen · To what, where: soul, you, own

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 (priest, this), 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	He	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 give	nsubj
2	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	3 give	aux
3	give	give	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
4	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	5 soul	det
5	soul	soul	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 give	obj
6	to	to	ADP	_	7 you	case
7	you	you	PRON	Case=Acc Person=2 PronType=Prs	3 give	obl
8	and	and	CCONJ	_	9 retain	cc
9	retain	retain	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	3 give	conj
10	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	11 own	nmod:poss
11	own	own	ADJ	Degree=Pos	9 retain	obj
12	as	as	ADV	ExtPos=ADV	9 retain	advmod
13	well	well	ADV	Degree=Pos	12 as	fixed
14	;	;	PUNCT	_	19 happen	punct
15	but	but	CCONJ	_	19 happen	cc
16	this	this	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	19 happen	nsubj
17	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	19 happen	aux
18	never	never	ADV	PronType=Neg	19 happen	advmod
19	happen	happen	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	3 give	conj
20	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 give	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	roles by
1	give	would	priest	a soul	you	vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent soul=Theme to you=Recipient
2	retain	infinitive	priest not said here	priest's own		tree rules
3	not happen	can	this			vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme

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/pg27200/76/63/