The Blue Fairy Book, The White Cat, part 2, sentence 44
Sometimes the Prince could not help asking the White Cat how it was she could talk.
Who acts: Prince, battle · What happens: not help, ask, be · To what, where: White Cat
This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The White Cat, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Prince, battle), 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 | Sometimes | sometimes | ADV | PronType=Ind | 6 help | advmod |
| 2 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 3 Prince | det |
| 3 | Prince | Prince | PROPN | Number=Sing | 6 help | nsubj |
| 4 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 6 help | aux |
| 5 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 6 help | advmod |
| 6 | help | help | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 7 | asking | ask | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 6 help | xcomp |
| 8 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 10 Cat | det |
| 9 | White | white | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 10 Cat | amod |
| 10 | Cat | cat | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 asking | obj |
| 11 | how | how | ADV | PronType=Int | 16 talk | advmod |
| 12 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 16 talk | nsubj |
| 13 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 16 talk | cop |
| 14 | she | she | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 16 talk | nsubj |
| 15 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 16 talk | aux |
| 16 | talk | talk | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 10 Cat | acl:relcl |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 6 help | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not help | could | the Prince | sometimes property | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Theme | ||||
| 2 | ask speech: ask not said to happen | gerund | the Prince not said here | the White Cat | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent cat=Recipient | ||||
| 3 | is | could · past | battle | talk 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/pg503/24/44/