The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 26, sentence 97

“Ah! those were better times when I used to paint all the birds such gay colours,” sighed the fox.

Who acts: bear · What happens: be, use, paint, sigh · To what, where: better times, birds, fox

This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 26. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (bear), 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	_	21 sighed	punct
2	Ah	ah	INTJ	_	4 those	discourse
3	!	!	PUNCT	_	2 Ah	punct
4	those	that	DET	Number=Plur PronType=Dem	7 times	det
5	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	7 times	cop
6	better	good	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	7 times	amod
7	times	time	NOUN	Number=Plur	21 sighed	obl:unmarked
8	when	when	ADV	PronType=Int	10 used	advmod
9	I	I	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	10 used	nsubj
10	used	use	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	7 times	acl:relcl
11	to	to	PART	_	12 paint	mark
12	paint	paint	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	10 used	xcomp
13	all	all	DET	PronType=Tot	15 birds	det:predet
14	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	15 birds	det
15	birds	bird	NOUN	Number=Plur	12 paint	obj
16	such	such	ADJ	Degree=Pos	18 colours	amod
17	gay	gay	ADJ	Degree=Pos	18 colours	amod
18	colours	colour	NOUN	Number=Plur	15 birds	conj
19	,	,	PUNCT	_	10 used	punct
20	”	"	PUNCT	_	10 used	punct
21	sighed	sigh	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
22	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	23 fox	det
23	fox	fox	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 sighed	obj
24	.	.	PUNCT	_	21 sighed	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	is a in a quote	past		that better times	tree rules
2	use in a quote	past	bear		vn use-105.1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality
3	paint in a quote	to-infinitive	bear not said here	all birds and such gay colours	vn image_impression-25.1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent bird=Theme
4	sigh	past		the fox	vn manner_speaking-37.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent fox=Topic

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/pg3282/26/97/