The Blue Fairy Book, The Forty Thieves, sentence 26

Knowing Ali Baba’s poverty, the sister was curious to find out what sort of grain his wife wished to measure, and artfully put some suet at the bottom of the measure.

Who acts: you, sister, wife · What happens: know, be, find out, wish, measure, put · To what, where: poverty, sort, suet, bottom, grain

This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Forty Thieves. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, sister, wife), 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	Knowing	know	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	26 put	advcl
2	Ali	Ali	PROPN	Number=Sing	5 poverty	nmod:poss
3	Baba	Baba	PROPN	Number=Sing	2 Ali	flat
4	’s	's	PART	_	2 Ali	case
5	poverty	poverty	NOUN	Number=Sing	1 Knowing	obj
6	,	,	PUNCT	_	10 curious	punct
7	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	8 sister	det
8	sister	sister	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 curious	nsubj
9	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	10 curious	cop
10	curious	curious	ADJ	Degree=Pos	5 poverty	conj
11	to	to	PART	_	12 find	mark
12	find	find	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	10 curious	csubj
13	out	out	ADP	_	12 find	compound:prt
14	what	what	DET	PronType=Int	15 sort	det
15	sort	sort	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 find	obj
16	of	of	ADP	_	17 grain	case
17	grain	grain	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 sort	nmod
18	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	19 wife	nmod:poss
19	wife	wife	NOUN	Number=Sing	20 wished	nsubj
20	wished	wish	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	15 sort	acl:relcl
21	to	to	PART	_	22 measure	mark
22	measure	measure	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	20 wished	xcomp
23	,	,	PUNCT	_	26 put	punct
24	and	and	CCONJ	_	26 put	cc
25	artfully	artfully	ADV	_	26 put	advmod
26	put	put	VERB	Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin	root	root
27	some	some	DET	PronType=Ind	28 suet	det
28	suet	suet	NOUN	Number=Sing	26 put	obj
29	at	at	ADP	_	31 bottom	case
30	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	31 bottom	det
31	bottom	bottom	NOUN	Number=Sing	26 put	obl
32	of	of	ADP	_	34 measure	case
33	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	34 measure	det
34	measure	measure	NOUN	Number=Sing	31 bottom	nmod
35	.	.	PUNCT	_	26 put	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	know	gerund	you not said here	Ali's poverty			vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer poverty=Stimulus
2	is	past	the sister			curious property	tree rules
3	find out	to-infinitive		what sort of grain			vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent sort=Topic
4	wish	past	Ali's wife	what sort of grain not said here			tree rules
5	measure not said to happen	to-infinitive	Ali's wife not said here				vn register-54.1-2-1 «NP V NP.value»: agent=Theme
6	put	imperative	you not said here	some suet	the bottom of the measure	artfully property	vn put-9.1-2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent suet=Theme at bottom=Destination
7	sort			grain			nom sort «cognition transitive»: of=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/pg503/34/26/