The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 10, sentence 98

Faint as was her whisper, it reached the ears of Alonzo, who, though he still could not speak for laughing, shook his head.

Who acts: whisper, ears · What happens: be, reach, not speak, laugh, shake · To what, where: ears, head · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 10. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (whisper, ears), 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	Faint	faint	ADJ	Degree=Pos	5 whisper	case
2	as	as	ADP	_	1 Faint	fixed
3	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 whisper	cop
4	her	her	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	5 whisper	nmod:poss
5	whisper	whisper	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 reached	obl
6	,	,	PUNCT	_	5 whisper	punct
7	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	8 reached	nsubj
8	reached	reach	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
9	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	10 ears	det
10	ears	ear	NOUN	Number=Plur	8 reached	obj
11	of	of	ADP	_	12 Alonzo	case
12	Alonzo	Alonzo	PROPN	Number=Sing	10 ears	nmod
13	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 speak	punct
14	who	who	PRON	PronType=Rel	21 speak	nsubj
15	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 speak	punct
16	though	though	SCONJ	_	21 speak	mark
17	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 speak	nsubj
18	still	still	ADV	_	21 speak	advmod
19	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	21 speak	aux
20	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	21 speak	advmod
21	speak	speak	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	10 ears	conj
22	for	for	SCONJ	_	23 laughing	mark
23	laughing	laugh	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	21 speak	advcl
24	,	,	PUNCT	_	25 shook	punct
25	shook	shake	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	8 reached	conj
26	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	27 head	nmod:poss
27	head	head	NOUN	Number=Sing	25 shook	obj
28	.	.	PUNCT	_	8 reached	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	is	past				faint girl's whisper	tree rules
2	reach	past	whisper	the ears of Alonzo			vn body_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Agent ear=Theme
3	not speak speech: other	could	the ears of Alonzo		still		vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent
4	laugh	gerund	the ears of Alonzo not said here				vn nonverbal_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent
5	shake	past	whisper not said here	Alonzo's head			vn shake-22.3-2 «NP V NP together»: agent=Agent head=Patient

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 Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3282 (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/pg3282/10/98/