Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter III, sentence 9

But Tuan pleaded: “Let the past be content with itself, for man needs forgetfulness as well as memory.”

Who acts: Tuan, past, man · What happens: plead, let, be, need · To what, where: past, forgetfulness · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter III. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Tuan, past, man), 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	_	3 pleaded	cc
2	Tuan	Tuan	PROPN	Number=Sing	3 pleaded	nsubj
3	pleaded	plead	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	:	:	PUNCT	_	6 Let	punct
5	“	"	PUNCT	_	6 Let	punct
6	Let	let	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	3 pleaded	ccomp
7	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	8 past	det
8	past	past	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 Let	obj
9	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	10 content	cop
10	content	content	ADJ	Degree=Pos	6 Let	xcomp
11	with	with	ADP	_	12 itself	case
12	itself	itself	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes	10 content	obl
13	,	,	PUNCT	_	16 needs	punct
14	for	for	ADP	_	15 man	case
15	man	man	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 needs	nsubj
16	needs	need	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	6 Let	parataxis
17	forgetfulness	forgetfulness	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 needs	obj
18	as	as	ADV	ExtPos=CCONJ	21 memory	cc
19	well	well	ADV	Degree=Pos	18 as	fixed
20	as	as	ADP	_	18 as	fixed
21	memory	memory	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 needs	conj
22	.	.	PUNCT	_	6 Let	punct
23	”	"	PUNCT	_	6 Let	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	plead speech: request	past	Tuan			tree rules
2	let in a quote	infinitive		the past		vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent past=Theme
3	is in a quote	infinitive	the past not said here		with past; content property	tree rules
4	need in a quote	present	man	forgetfulness		vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot forgetfulness=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: «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/pg2892/4/9/