The Blue Fairy Book, The White Cat, part 1, sentence 84
The King did not know what to say, for it was impossible that anything could be prettier than this little creature.
Who acts: King, anything · What happens: not know, say, be · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The White Cat, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (King, anything), 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 King | det |
| 2 | King | King | PROPN | Number=Sing | 5 know | nsubj |
| 3 | did | do | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 know | aux |
| 4 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 5 know | advmod |
| 5 | know | know | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 6 | what | what | PRON | PronType=Int | 8 say | obj |
| 7 | to | to | PART | _ | 8 say | mark |
| 8 | say | say | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 5 know | ccomp |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 13 impossible | punct |
| 10 | for | for | ADP | _ | 13 impossible | case |
| 11 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 13 impossible | expl |
| 12 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 13 impossible | cop |
| 13 | impossible | impossible | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 5 know | conj |
| 14 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 18 prettier | mark |
| 15 | anything | anything | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Ind | 18 prettier | nsubj |
| 16 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 18 prettier | aux |
| 17 | be | be | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 18 prettier | cop |
| 18 | prettier | pretty | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 13 impossible | xcomp |
| 19 | than | than | ADP | _ | 22 creature | case |
| 20 | this | this | DET | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 22 creature | det |
| 21 | little | little | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 22 creature | amod |
| 22 | creature | creature | NOUN | Number=Sing | 18 prettier | obl |
| 23 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 know | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not know | past · do-support | the King | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus | |||||
| 2 | say speech: assert | to-infinitive | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent what=Topic | ||||||
| 3 | is | past | the King not said here | impossible property | tree rules | ||||
| 4 | is | could | anything | than this little creature; pretty 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 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/pg503/23/84/