The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 9, sentence 63

Again and again they tried, but the basket was only a basket, with a few scales of fish sticking to the bottom, for the innkeeper’s wife had taken it to market the day before.

Who acts: children, basket, fish, wife · What happens: try, be, stick, take · To what, where: basket

This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (children, basket, fish, wife), 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	Again	again	ADV	_	5 tried	advmod
2	and	and	CCONJ	_	5 tried	cc
3	again	again	ADV	_	5 tried	advmod
4	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	5 tried	nsubj
5	tried	try	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
6	,	,	PUNCT	_	13 basket	punct
7	but	but	CCONJ	_	13 basket	cc
8	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	9 basket	det
9	basket	basket	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 basket	nsubj
10	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	13 basket	cop
11	only	only	ADV	_	13 basket	advmod
12	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	13 basket	det
13	basket	basket	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 tried	obj
14	,	,	PUNCT	_	18 scales	punct
15	with	with	ADP	_	18 scales	case
16	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	18 scales	det
17	few	few	ADJ	Degree=Pos	18 scales	amod
18	scales	scale	NOUN	Number=Plur	13 basket	conj
19	of	of	ADP	_	20 fish	case
20	fish	fish	NOUN	Number=Plur	18 scales	nmod
21	sticking	stick	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	20 fish	acl
22	to	to	ADP	_	24 bottom	case
23	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	24 bottom	det
24	bottom	bottom	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 sticking	obl
25	,	,	PUNCT	_	32 taken	punct
26	for	for	SCONJ	_	32 taken	mark
27	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	28 innkeeper	det
28	innkeeper	innkeeper	NOUN	Number=Sing	30 wife	nmod:poss
29	’s	's	PART	_	28 innkeeper	case
30	wife	wife	NOUN	Number=Sing	32 taken	nsubj
31	had	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	32 taken	aux
32	taken	take	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	5 tried	conj
33	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	32 taken	obj
34	to	to	PART	_	35 market	mark
35	market	market	NOUN	Number=Sing	32 taken	advcl
36	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	37 day	det
37	day	day	NOUN	Number=Sing	32 taken	obl:unmarked
38	before	before	ADV	_	32 taken	advmod
39	.	.	PUNCT	_	5 tried	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	try	past	children = child		again; again		vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer
2	is a	past	the basket	a basket and a few scales of fish			tree rules
3	stick	gerund	fish not said here			to the bottom	vn shake-22.3-2 «NP V NP PP»: agent=Agent to bottom=Co-Patient
4	take	past · perfect	the innkeeper's wife	basket	day	before property	vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: 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/pg3282/9/63/