The Blue Fairy Book, The Terrible Head, sentence 62

Then they began to implore the boy to give them their eye back again, and he could not help being sorry for them, they were so pitiful.

Who acts: eyes, boy · What happens: begin, implore, give, not help, be · To what, where: boy, eye, eyes

This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Terrible Head. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (eyes, boy), 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	Then	then	ADV	PronType=Dem	3 began	advmod
2	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 began	nsubj
3	began	begin	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	to	to	PART	_	5 implore	mark
5	implore	implore	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	3 began	xcomp
6	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	7 boy	det
7	boy	boy	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 implore	obj
8	to	to	PART	_	9 give	mark
9	give	give	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	5 implore	xcomp
10	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	9 give	iobj
11	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	12 eye	nmod:poss
12	eye	eye	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 give	obj
13	back	back	ADV	_	14 again	advmod
14	again	again	ADV	_	9 give	advmod
15	,	,	PUNCT	_	20 help	punct
16	and	and	CCONJ	_	20 help	cc
17	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	20 help	nsubj
18	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	20 help	aux
19	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	20 help	advmod
20	help	help	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	3 began	parataxis
21	being	be	AUX	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	22 sorry	cop
22	sorry	sorry	ADJ	Degree=Pos	20 help	xcomp
23	for	for	ADP	_	24 them	case
24	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	22 sorry	obl
25	,	,	PUNCT	_	29 pitiful	punct
26	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	29 pitiful	nsubj
27	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	29 pitiful	cop
28	so	so	ADV	_	29 pitiful	advmod
29	pitiful	pitiful	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 began	conj
30	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 began	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	when	other	roles by
1	begin	past	eyes = eye			then		vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality
2	implore	to-infinitive	eyes = eye not said here	the boy				vn urge-58.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_ING»: agent=Agent boy=Recipient clause=Topic
3	give	to-infinitive	eyes = eye not said here	eyes's eye	eyes = eye	again		vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent they=Recipient eye=Theme
4	not help	could	boy					vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent
5	is not said to happen	gerund	boy not said here				for eyes = eye; sorry property	tree rules
6	is	past	eyes = eye				pitiful 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/pg503/27/62/