The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 33, sentence 29

‘He was too busy,’ he said, ‘and really it was only rich people who could afford to waste time in talking.’

Who acts: charm, work, rich people · What happens: be, say, afford, waste, talk · To what, where: rich people · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 33. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (charm, work, rich people), 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	_	5 busy	punct
2	He	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	5 busy	nsubj
3	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 busy	cop
4	too	too	ADV	_	5 busy	advmod
5	busy	busy	ADJ	Degree=Pos	9 said	ccomp
6	,	,	PUNCT	_	5 busy	punct
7	’	'	PUNCT	_	5 busy	punct
8	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	9 said	nsubj
9	said	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	9 said	punct
11	‘	‘	PUNCT	_	21 afford	punct
12	and	and	CCONJ	_	18 people	cc
13	really	really	ADV	_	18 people	advmod
14	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	18 people	nsubj
15	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	18 people	cop
16	only	only	ADV	_	18 people	advmod
17	rich	rich	ADJ	Degree=Pos	18 people	amod
18	people	people	NOUN	Number=Plur	21 afford	nsubj
19	who	who	PRON	PronType=Rel	21 afford	nsubj
20	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	21 afford	aux
21	afford	afford	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	9 said	ccomp
22	to	to	PART	_	23 waste	mark
23	waste	waste	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	21 afford	xcomp
24	time	time	NOUN	Number=Sing	23 waste	obj
25	in	in	SCONJ	_	26 talking	mark
26	talking	talk	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	23 waste	advcl
27	.	.	PUNCT	_	21 afford	punct
28	’	'	PUNCT	_	21 afford	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	is	past	charm			busy property	tree rules
2	say speech: assert	past	charm				vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
3	is a	past	work	rich people			tree rules
4	afford	could	rich people				tree rules
5	waste	to-infinitive	rich people not said here		time		vn destroy-44 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent
6	talk	gerund	rich people not said here				vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent

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/pg3454/33/29/