The Blue Fairy Book, The Water-lily. the Gold-spinners, sentence 107
“Nothing worse than death can befall me,” thought the Prince, “and death is better than endless sorrow.”
Who acts: Nothing, Prince · What happens: befall, think, be · To what, where: me · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Water-lily. the Gold-spinners. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Nothing, Prince), 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 | _ | 7 befall | punct |
| 2 | Nothing | nothing | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Neg | 7 befall | nsubj |
| 3 | worse | bad | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 2 Nothing | amod |
| 4 | than | than | ADP | _ | 5 death | case |
| 5 | death | death | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 worse | obl |
| 6 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 7 befall | aux |
| 7 | befall | befall | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 11 thought | parataxis |
| 8 | me | I | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 7 befall | obj |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 7 befall | punct |
| 10 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 7 befall | punct |
| 11 | thought | think | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 12 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 13 Prince | det |
| 13 | Prince | Prince | PROPN | Number=Sing | 19 better | nsubj |
| 14 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 19 better | punct |
| 15 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 19 better | punct |
| 16 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 19 better | cc |
| 17 | death | death | NOUN | Number=Sing | 19 better | nsubj |
| 18 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 19 better | cop |
| 19 | better | good | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 11 thought | ccomp |
| 20 | than | than | ADP | _ | 22 sorrow | case |
| 21 | endless | endless | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 22 sorrow | amod |
| 22 | sorrow | sorrow | NOUN | Number=Sing | 19 better | obl |
| 23 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 11 thought | punct |
| 24 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 11 thought | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | befall in a quote | can | Nothing | me | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | think speech: other | past | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme | ||||||
| 3 | is in a quote | present | the Prince | than endless sorrow; good 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/pg503/26/107/