The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 22, sentence 30

“How can I tell the sultan that a head without a body wishes to become his son-in-law?

Who acts: old woman, head · What happens: tell, wish, become · To what, where: sultan, son · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 22. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old woman, head), 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	_	5 tell	punct
2	How	how	ADV	PronType=Int	5 tell	advmod
3	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	5 tell	aux
4	I	I	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	5 tell	nsubj
5	tell	tell	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
6	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	7 sultan	det
7	sultan	sultan	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 tell	obj
8	that	that	SCONJ	_	14 wishes	mark
9	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	10 head	det
10	head	head	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 wishes	nsubj
11	without	without	ADP	_	13 body	case
12	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	13 body	det
13	body	body	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 head	nmod
14	wishes	wish	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	5 tell	advcl
15	to	to	PART	_	16 become	mark
16	become	become	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	14 wishes	xcomp
17	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	18 son	nmod:poss
18	son	son	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 become	xcomp
19	-	-	PUNCT	_	22 law	punct
20	in	in	ADP	_	22 law	case
21	-	-	PUNCT	_	20 in	punct
22	law	law	NOUN	Number=Sing	18 son	nmod
23	?	?	PUNCT	_	5 tell	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	tell speech: assert in a quote	can	the old woman = woman	the sultan	vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent sultan=Recipient
2	wish in a quote	present	a head without a body		vn wish-62 «NP V for NP S_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme
3	become not said to happen, in a quote	to-infinitive	a head without a body not said here	wealth's son in law	vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=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/pg3282/22/30/