The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 1, sentence 93

‘If he is to be a thief at all, he had better be a good one.

Who acts: Moti · What happens: be, have · To what, where: thief, all, better good one

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 (Moti), 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	_	13 had	punct
2	If	if	SCONJ	_	8 thief	mark
3	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	8 thief	nsubj
4	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	8 thief	cop
5	to	to	PART	_	8 thief	mark
6	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	8 thief	cop
7	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	8 thief	det
8	thief	thief	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 had	advcl
9	at	at	ADP	_	10 all	case
10	all	all	DET	PronType=Tot	8 thief	nmod
11	,	,	PUNCT	_	8 thief	punct
12	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	13 had	nsubj
13	had	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
14	better	good	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	18 one	amod
15	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	18 one	cop
16	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	18 one	det
17	good	good	ADJ	Degree=Pos	18 one	amod
18	one	one	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 had	obj
19	.	.	PUNCT	_	13 had	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	roles by
1	is a a condition, not said to happen	present	Moti	a thief	all	tree rules
2	have	past	Moti			vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent
3	is a	infinitive		a better good one		tree rules

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/pg3454/1/93/