The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 8, sentence 22
“I think—but I could not ask you to do such a thing.
Who acts: husband · What happens: think, not ask, do · To what, where: you, thing
This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 8. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (husband), 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 | _ | 3 think | punct |
| 2 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 3 think | nsubj |
| 3 | think | think | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | — | - | PUNCT | _ | 9 ask | punct |
| 5 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 9 ask | cc |
| 6 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 9 ask | nsubj |
| 7 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 9 ask | aux |
| 8 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 9 ask | advmod |
| 9 | ask | ask | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 3 think | conj |
| 10 | you | you | PRON | Case=Acc Person=2 PronType=Prs | 9 ask | iobj |
| 11 | to | to | PART | _ | 12 do | mark |
| 12 | do | do | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 9 ask | xcomp |
| 13 | such | such | DET | PronType=Ind | 15 thing | det:predet |
| 14 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 15 thing | det |
| 15 | thing | thing | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 do | obj |
| 16 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 think | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | think speech: other in a quote | present | the husband = husband | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 2 | not ask speech: ask in a quote | could | the husband = husband | you | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S_INF»: agent=Agent you=Recipient clause=Topic | ||||
| 3 | do not said to happen, in a quote | to-infinitive | the husband = husband not said here | such thing | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent thing=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/pg3282/8/22/