The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 33, sentence 31

We began to talk about certain things which were happening in the palace, and of the events of past years. "

Who acts: We, certain things · What happens: begin, talk, happen · To what, where: palace

This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 33. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (We, certain things), 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	We	we	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	2 began	nsubj
2	began	begin	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	to	to	PART	_	4 talk	mark
4	talk	talk	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 began	xcomp
5	about	about	ADP	_	7 things	case
6	certain	certain	ADJ	Degree=Pos	7 things	amod
7	things	thing	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 talk	obl
8	which	which	PRON	PronType=Rel	10 happening	nsubj
9	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	10 happening	aux
10	happening	happen	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	7 things	acl:relcl
11	in	in	ADP	_	13 palace	case
12	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 palace	det
13	palace	palace	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 happening	obl
14	,	,	PUNCT	_	18 events	punct
15	and	and	CCONJ	_	18 events	cc
16	of	of	ADP	_	18 events	case
17	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	18 events	det
18	events	event	NOUN	Number=Plur	2 began	obl
19	of	of	ADP	_	21 years	case
20	past	past	ADJ	Degree=Pos	21 years	amod
21	years	year	NOUN	Number=Plur	18 events	nmod
22	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 began	punct
23	"	"	PUNCT	_	2 began	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	where	other	roles by
1	begin	past	We		of the events of past years	vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality
2	talk	to-infinitive	We not said here		about certain things	vn talk-37.5 «NP V PP.topic»: agent=Agent about thing=Topic
3	happen	past · progressive	certain things	the palace		vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme in palace=Location

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/pg3027/33/31/