The Blue Fairy Book, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was, sentence 10
“My dear father,” he replied, “I will gladly learn--in fact, if it were possible I should like to learn to shudder; I don’t understand that a bit yet.”
Who acts: dear father, money · What happens: reply, learn, be, like, not understand · To what, where: fact, shudder · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (dear father, money), 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 | _ | 8 replied | punct |
| 2 | My | my | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Sing Person=1 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 4 father | nmod:poss |
| 3 | dear | dear | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 4 father | amod |
| 4 | father | father | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 replied | nsubj |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 4 father | punct |
| 6 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 4 father | punct |
| 7 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 8 replied | nsubj |
| 8 | replied | reply | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 34 understand | advcl |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 14 learn | punct |
| 10 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 14 learn | punct |
| 11 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 14 learn | nsubj |
| 12 | will | will | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 14 learn | aux |
| 13 | gladly | gladly | ADV | _ | 14 learn | advmod |
| 14 | learn | learn | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 8 replied | conj |
| 15 | -- | -- | PUNCT | _ | 17 fact | punct |
| 16 | in | in | ADP | _ | 17 fact | case |
| 17 | fact | fact | NOUN | Number=Sing | 14 learn | obl |
| 18 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 22 possible | punct |
| 19 | if | if | SCONJ | _ | 22 possible | mark |
| 20 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 22 possible | nsubj |
| 21 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 22 possible | cop |
| 22 | possible | possible | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 14 learn | conj |
| 23 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 25 like | nsubj |
| 24 | should | should | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 25 like | aux |
| 25 | like | like | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 22 possible | parataxis |
| 26 | to | to | PART | _ | 27 learn | mark |
| 27 | learn | learn | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 25 like | xcomp |
| 28 | to | to | PART | _ | 29 shudder | mark |
| 29 | shudder | shudder | NOUN | Number=Sing | 27 learn | obj |
| 30 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 34 understand | punct |
| 31 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 34 understand | nsubj |
| 32 | do | do | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 34 understand | aux |
| 33 | n’t | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 34 understand | advmod |
| 34 | understand | understand | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 35 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 38 yet | mark |
| 36 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 37 bit | det |
| 37 | bit | bit | NOUN | Number=Sing | 38 yet | obl:unmarked |
| 38 | yet | yet | ADV | _ | 34 understand | advcl |
| 39 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 34 understand | punct |
| 40 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 34 understand | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | reply speech: assert | past | My dear father | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 2 | learn in a quote | future | My dear father = father | fact | gladly property | vn learn-14-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||
| 3 | is a condition, not said to happen, in a quote | past | money | possible property | tree rules | ||||
| 4 | like in a quote | should | My dear father = father | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme | |||||
| 5 | learn not said to happen, in a quote | to-infinitive | My dear father = father not said here | shudder | vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent shudder=Topic | ||||
| 6 | not understand in a quote | present · do-support | My dear father = father | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
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 Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (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/pg503/13/10/