The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 15, sentence 53

‘Is this horse for sale? may I try it?’ and, the merchants assenting, he scrambled up on its back, dug in his heels, and off they flew.

Who acts: horse, merchants, Moti, horses · What happens: be, try, assent, scramble up, dig, fly · To what, where: horse, sale, back, heels

This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 15. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (horse, merchants, Moti, horses), 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	_	4 horse	punct
2	Is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	4 horse	cop
3	this	this	DET	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	4 horse	det
4	horse	horse	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 try	nsubj
5	for	for	ADP	_	6 sale	case
6	sale	sale	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 horse	nmod
7	?	?	PUNCT	_	4 horse	punct
8	may	may	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	10 try	aux
9	I	I	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	10 try	nsubj
10	try	try	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
11	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	10 try	obj
12	?	?	PUNCT	_	10 try	punct
13	’	'	PUNCT	_	10 try	punct
14	and	and	CCONJ	_	18 assenting	cc
15	,	,	PUNCT	_	14 and	punct
16	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	17 merchants	det
17	merchants	merchant	NOUN	Number=Plur	18 assenting	nsubj
18	assenting	assent	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	10 try	conj
19	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 scrambled	punct
20	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 scrambled	nsubj
21	scrambled	scramble	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	10 try	parataxis
22	up	up	ADP	_	21 scrambled	compound:prt
23	on	on	ADP	_	25 back	case
24	its	its	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	25 back	nmod:poss
25	back	back	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 scrambled	obl
26	,	,	PUNCT	_	27 dug	punct
27	dug	dig	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	25 back	acl
28	in	in	ADP	_	30 heels	case
29	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	30 heels	nmod:poss
30	heels	heel	NOUN	Number=Plur	27 dug	obl
31	,	,	PUNCT	_	35 flew	punct
32	and	and	CCONJ	_	35 flew	cc
33	off	off	ADP	_	35 flew	mark
34	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	35 flew	nsubj
35	flew	fly	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	21 scrambled	conj
36	.	.	PUNCT	_	10 try	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	is a	present		this horse		for sale	tree rules
2	try	may	this horse	sale			vn try-61.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality
3	assent	gerund	the merchants				tree rules
4	scramble up	past	Moti		sale's back		vn run-51.3.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme on back=Trajectory
5	dig	participle		sale's back not said here	Moti's heels		vn hunt-35.1 «NP V PP.theme PP.location»: agent=Agent in heel=Location
6	fly	past	horses = horse				vn spatial_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=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 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/pg3454/15/53/