The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 23, sentence 43

‘Methinks she would soon be a dear cow if we had to feed her on salt herring.

Who acts: cow, we · What happens: be, have, feed · To what, where: dear cow, cow, salt herring

This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 23. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (cow, we), 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	_	2 Methinks	punct
2	Methinks	methink	NOUN	Number=Plur	root	root
3	she	she	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	9 cow	nsubj
4	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	9 cow	aux
5	soon	soon	ADV	Degree=Pos	9 cow	advmod
6	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	9 cow	cop
7	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	9 cow	det
8	dear	dear	ADJ	Degree=Pos	9 cow	amod
9	cow	cow	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 Methinks	nmod
10	if	if	SCONJ	_	12 had	mark
11	we	we	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	12 had	nsubj
12	had	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	9 cow	advcl
13	to	to	PART	_	14 feed	mark
14	feed	feed	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	12 had	xcomp
15	her	she	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 feed	obj
16	on	on	ADP	_	18 herring	case
17	salt	salt	NOUN	Number=Sing	18 herring	compound
18	herring	herring	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 feed	obl
19	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 Methinks	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	other	roles by
1	is a	would	cow	a dear cow			soon property	tree rules
2	have a condition, not said to happen	past	we					tree rules
3	feed	to-infinitive	we not said here		cow	salt herring		vn feeding-39.7 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent she=Recipient

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/pg3454/23/43/