The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 4, sentence 88
They had never been able to find out the murderer, and now suspected the prince.
Who acts: birds · What happens: not be, find out, suspect · To what, where: murderer, prince
This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (birds), 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 | They | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 5 able | nsubj |
| 2 | had | have | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 able | aux |
| 3 | never | never | ADV | PronType=Neg | 5 able | advmod |
| 4 | been | be | AUX | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | 5 able | cop |
| 5 | able | able | ADJ | Degree=Pos | root | root |
| 6 | to | to | PART | _ | 7 find | mark |
| 7 | find | find | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 5 able | xcomp |
| 8 | out | out | ADP | _ | 7 find | compound:prt |
| 9 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 10 murderer | det |
| 10 | murderer | murderer | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 find | obj |
| 11 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 14 suspected | punct |
| 12 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 14 suspected | cc |
| 13 | now | now | ADV | PronType=Dem | 14 suspected | advmod |
| 14 | suspected | suspect | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 able | conj |
| 15 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 16 prince | det |
| 16 | prince | prince | NOUN | Number=Sing | 14 suspected | obj |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 able | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not is | past · perfect | birds = bird | able property | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | find out | to-infinitive | birds = bird not said here | the murderer | vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent murderer=Topic | ||||
| 3 | suspect | past | birds = bird not said here | the prince | now | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V NP ADJ»: agent=Agent prince=Attribute |
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/pg3282/4/88/