The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 30, sentence 75

'Nay, then,' answered Covan as before, 'it had been easier for you to call off your dogs than to come here to tell me.'

Who acts: it, you · What happens: answer, be, call off, come, tell · To what, where: Covan, dogs, me · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 30. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (it, 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	_	7 answered	punct
2	Nay	nay	INTJ	_	7 answered	discourse
3	,	,	PUNCT	_	2 Nay	punct
4	then	then	ADV	PronType=Dem	7 answered	advmod
5	,	,	PUNCT	_	4 then	punct
6	'	'	PUNCT	_	4 then	punct
7	answered	answer	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	16 easier	advcl
8	Covan	Covan	PROPN	Number=Sing	7 answered	obj
9	as	as	ADP	_	10 before	case
10	before	before	ADV	_	7 answered	obl
11	,	,	PUNCT	_	16 easier	punct
12	'	'	PUNCT	_	16 easier	punct
13	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	16 easier	nsubj
14	had	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	16 easier	aux
15	been	be	AUX	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	16 easier	cop
16	easier	easy	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	root	root
17	for	for	SCONJ	_	20 call	mark
18	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	20 call	nsubj
19	to	to	PART	_	20 call	mark
20	call	call	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	16 easier	csubj
21	off	off	ADP	_	20 call	compound:prt
22	your	your	PRON	Case=Gen Person=2 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	23 dogs	nmod:poss
23	dogs	dog	NOUN	Number=Plur	20 call	obj
24	than	than	SCONJ	_	26 come	mark
25	to	to	PART	_	26 come	mark
26	come	come	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	20 call	advcl
27	here	here	ADV	PronType=Dem	26 come	advmod
28	to	to	PART	_	29 tell	mark
29	tell	tell	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	26 come	conj
30	me	I	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	29 tell	iobj
31	.	.	PUNCT	_	16 easier	punct
32	'	'	PUNCT	_	16 easier	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	answer speech: assert	past		Covan		then		vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent covan=Eventuality
2	is	past · perfect	it				easy property	tree rules
3	call off speech: assert	to-infinitive	you	your dogs				vn initiate_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent dog=Recipient
4	come	to-infinitive	you not said here		here			vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
5	tell speech: assert	to-infinitive	you not said here	me				vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=Recipient

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/pg3027/30/75/