The Blue Fairy Book, The Water-lily. the Gold-spinners, sentence 83

He heard a thrush say to a magpie: “How stupid men are! they cannot understand the simplest thing.

Who acts: prince, thrush, stupid men · What happens: hear, say, not be · To what, where: magpie · 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, thrush, stupid men), 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 heard	nsubj
2	heard	hear	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	4 thrush	det
4	thrush	thrush	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 say	nsubj
5	say	say	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 heard	ccomp
6	to	to	ADP	_	8 magpie	case
7	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	8 magpie	det
8	magpie	magpie	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 say	obl
9	:	:	PUNCT	_	19 understand	punct
10	“	"	PUNCT	_	13 men	punct
11	How	how	ADV	PronType=Int	12 stupid	advmod
12	stupid	stupid	ADJ	Degree=Pos	13 men	amod
13	men	man	NOUN	Number=Plur	19 understand	nsubj
14	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	19 understand	cop
15	!	!	PUNCT	_	19 understand	punct
16	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	19 understand	nsubj
17	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	19 understand	aux
18	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	19 understand	advmod
19	understand	understand	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 heard	parataxis
20	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	22 thing	det
21	simplest	simple	ADJ	Degree=Sup	22 thing	amod
22	thing	thing	NOUN	Number=Sing	19 understand	obj
23	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 heard	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	to whom	other	roles by
1	hear	past	prince			vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus
2	say speech: assert	infinitive	a thrush	a magpie		vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to magpie=Recipient
3	not is in a quote	can · present	stupid men		understand 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/pg503/26/83/