The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 29, sentence 28

He would thus be able to whisk the ball to and fro till, by-and-by, the string would become quite loose, and it would fall to the ground.

Who acts: cat, string, ball · What happens: be, whisk, fro, become, fall · To what, where: ball

This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 29. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (cat, string, ball), 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	5 able	nsubj
2	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	5 able	aux
3	thus	thus	ADV	_	5 able	advmod
4	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	5 able	cop
5	able	able	ADJ	Degree=Pos	root	root
6	to	to	PART	_	7 whisk	mark
7	whisk	whisk	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	5 able	xcomp
8	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	9 ball	det
9	ball	ball	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 whisk	obj
10	to	to	PART	_	12 fro	mark
11	and	and	CCONJ	_	12 fro	cc
12	fro	fro	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	7 whisk	advcl
13	till	till	ADV	_	12 fro	advmod
14	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 by	punct
15	by	by	ADP	_	12 fro	obl
16	-	-	PUNCT	_	15 by	punct
17	and	and	CCONJ	_	19 by	cc
18	-	-	PUNCT	_	19 by	punct
19	by	by	ADP	_	15 by	conj
20	,	,	PUNCT	_	24 become	punct
21	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	22 string	det
22	string	string	NOUN	Number=Sing	24 become	nsubj
23	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	24 become	aux
24	become	become	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	7 whisk	conj
25	quite	quite	ADV	_	26 loose	advmod
26	loose	loose	ADJ	Degree=Pos	24 become	xcomp
27	,	,	PUNCT	_	31 fall	punct
28	and	and	CCONJ	_	31 fall	cc
29	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	31 fall	nsubj
30	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	31 fall	aux
31	fall	fall	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	5 able	conj
32	to	to	ADP	_	34 ground	case
33	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	34 ground	det
34	ground	ground	NOUN	Number=Sing	31 fall	obl
35	.	.	PUNCT	_	5 able	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	is	would	cat		able, thus property	tree rules
2	whisk	to-infinitive	cat not said here	the ball		vn shake-22.3-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent ball=Patient
3	fro	to-infinitive	cat not said here		till property	tree rules
4	become	would	the string		loose property	vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient
5	fall	would	ball		to the ground	vn acquiesce-95.1-1 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent to ground=Theme

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/pg3282/29/28/