The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 3, sentence 11

For hours they talked, but to no purpose, and in the end they hit upon a plan which they might just as well have thought of at the beginning.

Who acts: person · What happens: talk, hit, think · To what, where: end, person

This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (person), 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	_	2 hours	case
2	hours	hour	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 talked	obl
3	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 talked	nsubj
4	talked	talk	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
5	,	,	PUNCT	_	9 purpose	punct
6	but	but	CCONJ	_	9 purpose	cc
7	to	to	ADP	_	9 purpose	case
8	no	no	DET	PronType=Neg	9 purpose	det
9	purpose	purpose	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 talked	obl
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	16 hit	punct
11	and	and	CCONJ	_	16 hit	cc
12	in	in	ADP	_	14 end	case
13	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	14 end	det
14	end	end	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 hit	obl
15	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	16 hit	nsubj
16	hit	hit	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 talked	conj
17	upon	upon	ADP	_	19 plan	case
18	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	19 plan	det
19	plan	plan	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 hit	obl
20	which	which	PRON	PronType=Rel	27 thought	obj
21	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	27 thought	nsubj:pass
22	might	might	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	27 thought	aux
23	just	just	ADV	_	27 thought	advmod
24	as	as	ADV	ExtPos=CCONJ	27 thought	cc
25	well	well	ADV	Degree=Pos	24 as	fixed
26	have	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	27 thought	aux
27	thought	think	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	19 plan	acl:relcl
28	of	of	ADP	_	31 beginning	case
29	at	at	ADP	_	31 beginning	case
30	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	31 beginning	det
31	beginning	beginning	NOUN	Number=Sing	27 thought	obl
32	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 talked	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	talk	past	person		hour	to no purpose	vn talk-37.5 «NP V PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent to purpose=Co-Agent
2	hit	past	person		in the end	upon a plan	vn contiguous_location-47.8-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
3	think speech: other	might · perfect · passive		person	of the beginning		vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V NP ADJ»: subject=Theme which=Attribute

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.

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