The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 2, sentence 90

The Shifty Lad was too clever for them all, and if they laid traps he laid better ones.

Who acts: Shifty Lad, friends, Lad · What happens: be, lay · To what, where: traps, better ones

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 (Shifty Lad, friends, Lad), 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	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	3 Lad	det
2	Shifty	shifty	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 Lad	amod
3	Lad	Lad	PROPN	Number=Sing	6 clever	nsubj
4	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	6 clever	cop
5	too	too	ADV	_	6 clever	advmod
6	clever	clever	ADJ	Degree=Pos	root	root
7	for	for	ADP	_	8 them	case
8	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	6 clever	obl
9	all	all	DET	PronType=Tot	8 them	nmod:unmarked
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 laid	punct
11	and	and	CCONJ	_	17 laid	cc
12	if	if	SCONJ	_	14 laid	mark
13	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 laid	nsubj
14	laid	lay	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	17 laid	advcl
15	traps	trap	NOUN	Number=Plur	14 laid	obj
16	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	17 laid	nsubj
17	laid	lay	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	6 clever	conj
18	better	good	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	19 ones	amod
19	ones	one	NOUN	Number=Plur	17 laid	obj
20	.	.	PUNCT	_	6 clever	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	is	past	the Shifty Lad		for friends = friend; clever property	tree rules
2	lay a condition, not said to happen	past	friends = friend	traps		vn create-26.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent trap=Result
3	lay	past	Lad	better ones		vn create-26.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent one=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/pg3454/2/90/