Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Marsh King's Daughter, part 2, sentence 101

But how could such a recipe be prepared--that was a difficulty they could not overcome.

Who acts: that, Inquiries · What happens: prepare, be, not overcome · To what, where: recipe, difficulty

This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Marsh King's Daughter, 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 (that, Inquiries), 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	But	but	CCONJ	_	8 prepared	cc
2	how	how	ADV	PronType=Int	8 prepared	advmod
3	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	8 prepared	aux
4	such	such	DET	PronType=Ind	6 recipe	det:predet
5	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	6 recipe	det
6	recipe	recipe	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 prepared	nsubj:pass
7	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	8 prepared	aux:pass
8	prepared	prepare	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	root	root
9	--	--	PUNCT	_	13 difficulty	punct
10	that	that	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	13 difficulty	nsubj
11	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	13 difficulty	cop
12	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	13 difficulty	det
13	difficulty	difficulty	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 prepared	conj
14	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	17 overcome	nsubj
15	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	17 overcome	aux
16	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	17 overcome	advmod
17	overcome	overcome	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	13 difficulty	acl:relcl
18	.	.	PUNCT	_	8 prepared	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	prepare	could · passive		such recipe	vn establish-55.5-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient
2	is a	past	that	a difficulty	tree rules
3	not overcome	could	Inquiries = inquiry	a difficulty not said here	vn exceed-90 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot difficulty=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/pg27200/84/101/