The Blue Fairy Book, The Water-lily. the Gold-spinners, sentence 77

He told them what had befallen their sister the year before, and how he had twice heard a strange song, but yet could see no singer.

Who acts: prince · What happens: tell, befall, hear, see · To what, where: maidens, sister, strange song, singer · 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 (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	He	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 told	nsubj
2	told	tell	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 told	iobj
4	what	what	PRON	PronType=Int	6 befallen	nsubj:pass
5	had	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	6 befallen	aux
6	befallen	befall	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	2 told	ccomp
7	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	8 sister	nmod:poss
8	sister	sister	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 befallen	obj
9	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	10 year	det
10	year	year	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 befallen	obl:unmarked
11	before	before	ADV	_	6 befallen	advmod
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	18 heard	punct
13	and	and	CCONJ	_	18 heard	cc
14	how	how	ADV	PronType=Int	18 heard	advmod
15	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	18 heard	nsubj
16	had	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	18 heard	aux
17	twice	twice	ADV	NumForm=Word NumType=Mult	18 heard	advmod
18	heard	hear	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	2 told	parataxis
19	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	21 song	det
20	strange	strange	ADJ	Degree=Pos	21 song	amod
21	song	song	NOUN	Number=Sing	18 heard	obj
22	,	,	PUNCT	_	26 see	punct
23	but	but	CCONJ	_	26 see	cc
24	yet	yet	ADV	_	26 see	advmod
25	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	26 see	aux
26	see	see	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	18 heard	conj
27	no	no	DET	PronType=Neg	28 singer	det
28	singer	singer	NOUN	Number=Sing	26 see	obj
29	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 told	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	when	other	roles by
1	tell speech: assert	past	prince		maidens = maiden			vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP what S»: agent=Agent they=Recipient clause=Topic
2	befall	past · perfect · passive		maidens's sister		year	before property	tree rules
3	hear	past · perfect	prince	a strange song			twice property	vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer song=Stimulus
4	see	could	prince not said here	no singer		yet		vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer singer=Stimulus

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/pg503/26/77/