The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 6, sentence 83

When she wanted a child she just flung her ball in the direction of the child’s home, and however far off it might be, the ball was sure to reach it.

Who acts: wife, ball · What happens: want, fling, be, reach · To what, where: child, ball, direction

This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 6. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wife, 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	When	when	ADV	PronType=Int	3 wanted	advmod
2	she	she	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 wanted	nsubj
3	wanted	want	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	5 child	det
5	child	child	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 wanted	obj
6	she	she	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	8 flung	nsubj
7	just	just	ADV	_	8 flung	advmod
8	flung	fling	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 child	acl:relcl
9	her	her	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	10 ball	nmod:poss
10	ball	ball	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 flung	obj
11	in	in	ADP	_	13 direction	case
12	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 direction	det
13	direction	direction	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 flung	obl
14	of	of	ADP	_	18 home	case
15	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	16 child	det
16	child	child	NOUN	Number=Sing	18 home	nmod:poss
17	’s	's	PART	_	16 child	case
18	home	home	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 direction	nmod
19	,	,	PUNCT	_	31 sure	punct
20	and	and	CCONJ	_	31 sure	cc
21	however	however	ADV	_	22 far	advmod
22	far	far	ADV	Degree=Pos	31 sure	advmod
23	off	off	ADP	_	26 be	mark
24	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	26 be	nsubj
25	might	might	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	26 be	aux
26	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	22 far	advcl
27	,	,	PUNCT	_	22 far	punct
28	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	29 ball	det
29	ball	ball	NOUN	Number=Sing	31 sure	nsubj
30	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	31 sure	cop
31	sure	sure	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 wanted	conj
32	to	to	PART	_	33 reach	mark
33	reach	reach	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	31 sure	xcomp
34	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	33 reach	obj
35	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 wanted	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	want	past	wife	a child			vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot child=Theme
2	fling	past	wife	wife's ball	the direction of the child's home		vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP PP.destinations»: agent=Agent ball=Theme in direction=Destination
3	is	past	the ball			far, sure property	tree rules
4	reach	to-infinitive	the ball not said here	ball			vn body_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Agent it=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/pg3282/6/83/