The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 7, sentence 88

The man hesitated: it did seem a ‘little thing,’ and if it was to make his wife contented and happy it was well worth the risk.

Who acts: man, it, wife, thing · What happens: hesitate, seem, be, content · To what, where: little thing

This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 7. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man, it, wife, thing), 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	2 man	det
2	man	man	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 hesitated	nsubj
3	hesitated	hesitate	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	:	:	PUNCT	_	7 seem	punct
5	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	7 seem	nsubj
6	did	do	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	7 seem	aux
7	seem	seem	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	3 hesitated	ccomp
8	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	11 thing	det
9	‘	'	PUNCT	_	11 thing	punct
10	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	11 thing	amod
11	thing	thing	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 seem	obj
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	7 seem	punct
13	’	'	PUNCT	_	7 seem	punct
14	and	and	CCONJ	_	19 make	cc
15	if	if	SCONJ	_	19 make	mark
16	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	19 make	nsubj
17	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	19 make	cop
18	to	to	PART	_	19 make	mark
19	make	make	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	3 hesitated	conj
20	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	21 wife	nmod:poss
21	wife	wife	NOUN	Number=Sing	22 contented	nsubj
22	contented	content	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	19 make	ccomp
23	and	and	CCONJ	_	24 happy	cc
24	happy	happy	ADJ	Degree=Pos	22 contented	conj
25	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	28 worth	nsubj
26	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	28 worth	cop
27	well	well	ADV	Degree=Pos	28 worth	advmod
28	worth	worth	ADJ	Degree=Pos	24 happy	conj
29	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	30 risk	det
30	risk	risk	NOUN	Number=Sing	28 worth	obj
31	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 hesitated	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	hesitate	past	the man			tree rules
2	seem	past · do-support	it	a little thing		vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme thing=Attribute
3	is a condition, not said to happen	past	it		make property	tree rules
4	content	past	Man's wife			vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer
5	is	past	thing		well, worth property	tree rules

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/pg3454/7/88/