The Blue Fairy Book, Little Thumb, sentence 7

There happened now to come a very bad year, and the famine was so great that these poor people resolved to rid themselves of their children.

Who acts: famine, poor people · What happens: happen, come, be, resolve, rid · To what, where: people

This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Little Thumb. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (famine, poor people), 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	There	there	PRON	PronType=Dem	2 happened	expl
2	happened	happen	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	now	now	ADV	PronType=Dem	2 happened	advmod
4	to	to	PART	_	5 come	mark
5	come	come	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 happened	xcomp
6	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	9 year	det
7	very	very	ADV	_	8 bad	advmod
8	bad	bad	ADJ	Degree=Pos	9 year	amod
9	year	year	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 come	obl:unmarked
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	16 great	punct
11	and	and	CCONJ	_	16 great	cc
12	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 famine	det
13	famine	famine	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 great	nsubj
14	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	16 great	cop
15	so	so	ADV	_	16 great	advmod
16	great	great	ADJ	Degree=Pos	2 happened	parataxis
17	that	that	SCONJ	_	21 resolved	mark
18	these	this	DET	Number=Plur PronType=Dem	20 people	det
19	poor	poor	ADJ	Degree=Pos	20 people	amod
20	people	people	NOUN	Number=Plur	21 resolved	nsubj
21	resolved	resolve	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	16 great	advcl
22	to	to	PART	_	23 rid	mark
23	rid	rid	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	21 resolved	xcomp
24	themselves	themselves	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes	23 rid	obj
25	of	of	ADP	_	27 children	case
26	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	27 children	nmod:poss
27	children	child	NOUN	Number=Plur	23 rid	obl
28	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 happened	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	happen	past			there	now		tree rules
2	come	to-infinitive				year		vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
3	is	past	the famine				great property	tree rules
4	resolve	past	this poor people					tree rules
5	rid	to-infinitive	this poor people not said here	people			of people's children	vn deprive-10.6.2 «NP V NP PP.theme»: agent=Agent themselves=Source of child=Theme

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.

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