The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 1, sentence 32

People told them in all parts of the world long before Egyptian hieroglyphics or Cretan signs or Cyprian syllabaries, or alphabets were invented.

Who acts: People · What happens: tell, invent · To what, where: stories, parts, alphabets · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (People), 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	People	people	NOUN	Number=Plur	2 told	nsubj
2	told	tell	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 told	iobj
4	in	in	ADP	_	6 parts	case
5	all	all	DET	PronType=Tot	6 parts	det
6	parts	part	NOUN	Number=Plur	2 told	obl
7	of	of	ADP	_	9 world	case
8	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	9 world	det
9	world	world	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 parts	nmod
10	long	long	ADV	Degree=Pos	2 told	advmod
11	before	before	ADP	_	13 hieroglyphics	case
12	Egyptian	Egyptian	ADJ	Degree=Pos	13 hieroglyphics	amod
13	hieroglyphics	hieroglyphic	NOUN	Number=Plur	2 told	obl
14	or	or	CCONJ	_	16 signs	cc
15	Cretan	Cretan	PROPN	Number=Sing	16 signs	compound
16	signs	sign	NOUN	Number=Plur	13 hieroglyphics	conj
17	or	or	CCONJ	_	19 syllabaries	cc
18	Cyprian	cyprian	ADJ	Degree=Pos	19 syllabaries	amod
19	syllabaries	syllabary	NOUN	Number=Plur	13 hieroglyphics	conj
20	,	,	PUNCT	_	24 invented	punct
21	or	or	CCONJ	_	24 invented	cc
22	alphabets	alphabet	NOUN	Number=Plur	24 invented	nsubj:pass
23	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	24 invented	aux:pass
24	invented	invent	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	2 told	conj
25	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 told	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	tell speech: assert	past	People		stories = story	all parts of the world	before Egyptian hieroglyphics or Cretan signs or Cyprian syllabaries	long property	vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent they=Recipient
2	invent	past · passive		alphabets					vn create-26.4-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Result

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 Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3454 (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/pg3454/1/32/