Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter I, sentence 11

These two were Bran and Sceo’lan, but if a person were to guess for twenty years he would not find out why Fionn loved these two dogs and why he would never be separated from them.

Who acts: person, Fionn · What happens: be, guess, not find out, love, not separate · To what, where: two Bran, two dogs, Fionn · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (person, Fionn), 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	These	this	DET	Number=Plur PronType=Dem	4 Bran	det
2	two	two	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	4 Bran	nummod
3	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 Bran	cop
4	Bran	Bran	PROPN	Number=Sing	root	root
5	and	and	CCONJ	_	6 Sceo’lan	cc
6	Sceo’lan	Sceo'lan	PROPN	Number=Sing	4 Bran	conj
7	,	,	PUNCT	_	11 person	punct
8	but	but	CCONJ	_	11 person	cc
9	if	if	SCONJ	_	11 person	mark
10	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	11 person	det
11	person	person	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 Bran	appos
12	were	be	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	11 person	acl
13	to	to	PART	_	14 guess	mark
14	guess	guess	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	12 were	xcomp
15	for	for	ADP	_	17 years	case
16	twenty	twenty	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	17 years	nummod
17	years	year	NOUN	Number=Plur	21 find	obl
18	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 find	nsubj
19	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	21 find	aux
20	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	21 find	advmod
21	find	find	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	14 guess	ccomp
22	out	out	ADP	_	21 find	compound:prt
23	why	why	ADV	PronType=Int	25 loved	advmod
24	Fionn	Fionn	PROPN	Number=Sing	25 loved	nsubj
25	loved	love	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	21 find	ccomp
26	these	this	DET	Number=Plur PronType=Dem	28 dogs	det
27	two	two	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	28 dogs	nummod
28	dogs	dog	NOUN	Number=Plur	25 loved	obj
29	and	and	CCONJ	_	35 separated	cc
30	why	why	ADV	PronType=Int	35 separated	advmod
31	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	35 separated	nsubj
32	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	35 separated	aux
33	never	never	ADV	PronType=Neg	35 separated	advmod
34	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	35 separated	aux:pass
35	separated	separate	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	25 loved	conj
36	from	from	ADP	_	37 them	case
37	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	35 separated	obl
38	.	.	PUNCT	_	11 person	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	is a	past		this two Bran and Sceo’lan			tree rules
2	be	past	a person not said here				tree rules
3	guess	to-infinitive	a person not said here				vn conjecture-29.5-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme
4	not find out	would	Fionn		year		vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V what S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
5	love	past	Fionn	this two dogs			vn admire-31.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer dog=Stimulus
6	not separate	would · passive		Fionn		from dogs = dog	vn separate-23.1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.co-patient»: subject=Patient from they=Co-Patient

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: «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Project Gutenberg book 2892 (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/pg2892/28/11/