The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 9, sentence 36
'Is it nicer than this?' asked the duckling doubtfully.
Who acts: feeding, nicer · What happens: be, ask · To what, where: duckling
This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (feeding, nicer), 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 | _ | 4 nicer | punct |
| 2 | Is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 4 nicer | cop |
| 3 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 4 nicer | nsubj |
| 4 | nicer | nice | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 9 asked | nsubj |
| 5 | than | than | ADP | _ | 6 this | case |
| 6 | this | this | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 4 nicer | obl |
| 7 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 4 nicer | punct |
| 8 | ' | ' | PUNCT | _ | 4 nicer | punct |
| 9 | asked | ask | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 10 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 11 duckling | det |
| 11 | duckling | duckling | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 asked | obj |
| 12 | doubtfully | doubtfully | ADV | _ | 9 asked | advmod |
| 13 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 9 asked | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is | present | feeding | than this; nice property | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | ask speech: ask | past | nicer | the duckling | doubtfully property | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent duckling=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/pg3027/9/36/