The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 17, sentence 101
'Excuse my speaking to you, but I cannot help admiring those shoes of yours.
Who acts: you, I, my · What happens: excuse, not help, admire, speak · To what, where: speaking, you, shoes · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 17. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, I, my), 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 | ' | ' | PUNCT | _ | 2 Excuse | punct |
| 2 | Excuse | excuse | VERB | Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | my | my | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Sing Person=1 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 4 speaking | nmod:poss |
| 4 | speaking | speaking | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 Excuse | obj |
| 5 | to | to | ADP | _ | 6 you | case |
| 6 | you | you | PRON | Case=Acc Person=2 PronType=Prs | 2 Excuse | obl |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 12 help | punct |
| 8 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 12 help | cc |
| 9 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 12 help | nsubj |
| 10 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 12 help | aux |
| 11 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 12 help | advmod |
| 12 | help | help | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 2 Excuse | conj |
| 13 | admiring | admire | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 12 help | xcomp |
| 14 | those | that | DET | Number=Plur PronType=Dem | 15 shoes | det |
| 15 | shoes | shoe | NOUN | Number=Plur | 13 admiring | obj |
| 16 | of | of | ADP | _ | 17 yours | case |
| 17 | yours | your | PRON | Person=2 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 15 shoes | nmod |
| 18 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 Excuse | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | excuse | imperative | you not said here | my speaking | you | vn judgment-33.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent speaking=Theme | |||
| 2 | not help | can | I | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Theme | |||||
| 3 | admire not said to happen | gerund | I not said here | that shoes of yours | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer shoe=Stimulus | ||||
| 4 | speak | my | nom speaking «communication transitive»: poss=agent |
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: «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3027 (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/pg3027/17/101/