The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 33, sentence 46

Tephany tried to stammer some excuse, but her aunt was half mad with rage, and a box on the ears was her only answer.

Who acts: Tephany, aunt, box · What happens: try, stammer, be, answer · To what, where: excuse, Tephany

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 (Tephany, aunt, box), 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	Tephany	Tephany	PROPN	Number=Sing	2 tried	nsubj
2	tried	try	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	to	to	PART	_	4 stammer	mark
4	stammer	stammer	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 tried	xcomp
5	some	some	DET	PronType=Ind	6 excuse	det
6	excuse	excuse	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 stammer	obj
7	,	,	PUNCT	_	13 mad	punct
8	but	but	CCONJ	_	13 mad	cc
9	her	her	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	10 aunt	nmod:poss
10	aunt	aunt	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 mad	nsubj
11	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	13 mad	cop
12	half	half	ADV	NumForm=Word NumType=Frac	13 mad	advmod
13	mad	mad	ADJ	Degree=Pos	2 tried	parataxis
14	with	with	ADP	_	15 rage	case
15	rage	rage	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 mad	obl
16	,	,	PUNCT	_	26 answer	punct
17	and	and	CCONJ	_	26 answer	cc
18	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	19 box	det
19	box	box	NOUN	Number=Sing	24 her	nsubj
20	on	on	ADP	_	22 ears	case
21	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	22 ears	det
22	ears	ear	NOUN	Number=Plur	19 box	nmod
23	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	24 her	cop
24	her	she	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	26 answer	obl
25	only	only	ADV	_	26 answer	advmod
26	answer	answer	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	13 mad	conj
27	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 tried	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	try	past	Tephany			vn try-61.1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality
2	stammer speech: other not said to happen	to-infinitive	Tephany not said here	some excuse		vn manner_speaking-37.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent excuse=Topic
3	is	past	Tephany's aunt		with rage; half, mad property	tree rules
4	is a	past	a box on the ears	Tephany		tree rules
5	answer speech: assert	present	Tephany's aunt not said here			vn reciprocate-112-1 «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/pg3454/33/46/