The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 2, sentence 89
For a long while they tried in vain to lay hands on them.
Who acts: friends · What happens: try, lay · To what, where: vain, hands
This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (friends), 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 | For | for | ADP | _ | 3 long | case |
| 2 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 3 long | det |
| 3 | long | long | ADJ | Degree=Pos | root | root |
| 4 | while | while | SCONJ | _ | 6 tried | mark |
| 5 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 6 tried | nsubj |
| 6 | tried | try | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 3 long | advcl |
| 7 | in | in | ADP | _ | 8 vain | case |
| 8 | vain | vain | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 6 tried | obl |
| 9 | to | to | PART | _ | 10 lay | mark |
| 10 | lay | lay | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 6 tried | advcl |
| 11 | hands | hand | NOUN | Number=Plur | 10 lay | obj |
| 12 | on | on | ADP | _ | 13 them | case |
| 13 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 10 lay | obl |
| 14 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 long | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | try | past | friends = friend | vain | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer | ||||
| 2 | lay | to-infinitive | friends = friend not said here | hands | on friends = friend | vn put_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent hand=Theme on they=Destination |
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/pg3454/2/89/