The Blue Fairy Book, The History of Whittington, sentence 1

Dick Whittington was a very little boy when his father and mother died; so little, indeed, that he never knew them, nor the place where he was born.

Who acts: Dick, father · What happens: be, die, not know, bear · To what, where: little boy, father, Dick

This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The History of Whittington. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Dick, father), 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	Dick	Dick	PROPN	Number=Sing	7 boy	nsubj
2	Whittington	Whittington	PROPN	Number=Sing	1 Dick	flat
3	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	7 boy	cop
4	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	7 boy	det
5	very	very	ADV	_	6 little	advmod
6	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	7 boy	amod
7	boy	boy	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root
8	when	when	ADV	PronType=Int	13 died	advmod
9	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	10 father	nmod:poss
10	father	father	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 died	nsubj
11	and	and	CCONJ	_	12 mother	cc
12	mother	mother	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 father	conj
13	died	die	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	7 boy	acl:relcl
14	;	;	PUNCT	_	16 little	punct
15	so	so	ADV	_	16 little	advmod
16	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	7 boy	amod
17	,	,	PUNCT	_	18 indeed	punct
18	indeed	indeed	ADV	_	16 little	advmod
19	,	,	PUNCT	_	23 knew	punct
20	that	that	SCONJ	_	23 knew	mark
21	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	23 knew	nsubj
22	never	never	ADV	PronType=Neg	23 knew	advmod
23	knew	know	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	16 little	conj
24	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	23 knew	obj
25	,	,	PUNCT	_	28 place	punct
26	nor	nor	CCONJ	Polarity=Neg	28 place	cc
27	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	28 place	det
28	place	place	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 boy	conj
29	where	where	ADV	PronType=Rel	32 born	advmod
30	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	32 born	nsubj:pass
31	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	32 born	aux:pass
32	born	bear	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	28 place	acl:relcl
33	.	.	PUNCT	_	7 boy	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	is a	past	Dick	a little boy nor the place	tree rules
2	die	past	Dick's father and mother		vn calibratable_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute
3	not know	past	Dick	father	vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer they=Stimulus
4	bear	past · passive		Dick	vn birth-28.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient

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/pg503/29/1/