The Blue Fairy Book, The Water-lily. the Gold-spinners, sentence 8

They laughed at this oft-repeated caution, saying to each other: “How can our gold thread lose its brightness, and have we any chance of speaking to a man?”

Who acts: misfortunes, chance · What happens: laugh, repeat, say, lose, have, speak · To what, where: oft repeated caution, each, brightness, we · 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 (misfortunes, chance), 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	They	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 laughed	nsubj
2	laughed	laugh	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	at	at	ADP	_	8 caution	case
4	this	this	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	8 caution	nsubj
5	oft	oft	ADJ	Degree=Pos	8 caution	amod
6	-	-	PUNCT	_	5 oft	punct
7	repeated	repeat	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	8 caution	amod
8	caution	caution	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 laughed	obl
9	,	,	PUNCT	_	10 saying	punct
10	saying	say	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	2 laughed	advcl
11	to	to	ADP	_	12 each	case
12	each	each	DET	ExtPos=PRON PronType=Rcp	10 saying	obl
13	other	other	ADJ	Degree=Pos	12 each	fixed
14	:	:	PUNCT	_	21 lose	punct
15	“	"	PUNCT	_	21 lose	punct
16	How	how	ADV	PronType=Int	17 can	advmod
17	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	21 lose	aux
18	our	our	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=1 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	20 thread	nmod:poss
19	gold	gold	NOUN	Number=Sing	20 thread	compound
20	thread	thread	NOUN	Number=Sing	17 can	nsubj
21	lose	lose	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	2 laughed	parataxis
22	its	its	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	23 brightness	nmod:poss
23	brightness	brightness	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 lose	obj
24	,	,	PUNCT	_	26 have	punct
25	and	and	CCONJ	_	26 have	cc
26	have	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	21 lose	conj
27	we	we	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	26 have	obj
28	any	any	DET	PronType=Ind	29 chance	det
29	chance	chance	NOUN	Number=Sing	26 have	obj
30	of	of	SCONJ	_	31 speaking	mark
31	speaking	speak	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	29 chance	acl
32	to	to	ADP	_	34 man	case
33	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	34 man	det
34	man	man	NOUN	Number=Sing	31 speaking	obl
35	?	?	PUNCT	_	2 laughed	punct
36	”	"	PUNCT	_	2 laughed	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	other	roles by
1	laugh	past	misfortunes = misfortune			oft repeated caution		tree rules
2	repeat	participle						vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality
3	say speech: assert	gerund	misfortunes = misfortune not said here		each			vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to each=Recipient
4	lose in a quote	can		caution's brightness				vn succeed-74-3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent brightness=Eventuality
5	have in a quote	present		we				tree rules
6	speak speech: other in a quote	gerund	any chance not said here				to a man	vn talk-37.5 «NP V PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent to man=Co-Agent

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/pg503/26/8/