The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 24, sentence 4

He had never cut down a tree in his life, and had not the least idea how to begin.

What happens: not cut down, have, begin · To what, where: youth, life, least idea

This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 24. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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	He	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 cut	nsubj:pass
2	had	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 cut	aux
3	never	never	ADV	PronType=Neg	4 cut	advmod
4	cut	cut	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	root	root
5	down	down	ADP	_	4 cut	compound:prt
6	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	7 tree	det
7	tree	tree	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 cut	obj
8	in	in	ADP	_	10 life	case
9	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	10 life	nmod:poss
10	life	life	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 cut	obl
11	,	,	PUNCT	_	13 had	punct
12	and	and	CCONJ	_	13 had	cc
13	had	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 cut	parataxis
14	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	17 idea	advmod
15	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	17 idea	det
16	least	least	ADJ	Degree=Sup	17 idea	amod
17	idea	idea	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 had	obj
18	how	how	ADV	PronType=Int	20 begin	advmod
19	to	to	PART	_	20 begin	mark
20	begin	begin	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	17 idea	csubj
21	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 cut	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	what, whom	where	roles by
1	not cut down	past · perfect · passive	youth	youth's life	vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP NP»: subject=Beneficiary tree=Product
2	have	past	the least idea		vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent idea=Patient
3	begin	to-infinitive			vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality

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/pg3282/24/4/