The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 20, sentence 26
'You could not have asked a better person,' answered Jack cheerfully.
Who acts: You · What happens: not ask, answer · To what, where: better person, Jack
This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 20. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (You), 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 | _ | 6 asked | punct |
| 2 | You | you | PRON | Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs | 6 asked | nsubj |
| 3 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 6 asked | aux |
| 4 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 6 asked | advmod |
| 5 | have | have | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 6 asked | aux |
| 6 | asked | ask | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | root | root |
| 7 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 9 person | det |
| 8 | better | good | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 9 person | amod |
| 9 | person | person | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 asked | iobj |
| 10 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 12 answered | punct |
| 11 | ' | ' | PUNCT | _ | 12 answered | punct |
| 12 | answered | answer | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 asked | parataxis |
| 13 | Jack | Jack | PROPN | Number=Sing | 12 answered | obj |
| 14 | cheerfully | cheerfully | ADV | _ | 12 answered | advmod |
| 15 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 6 asked | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not ask speech: ask | could · perfect | You | a better person | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent person=Recipient | ||||
| 2 | answer speech: assert | past | Jack | cheerfully property | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent jack=Eventuality |
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/pg3027/20/26/