The Blue Fairy Book, The Forty Thieves, sentence 72
If the messenger fails he must lose his life, lest we be betrayed.”
Who acts: messenger · What happens: fail, lose, betray · To what, where: life, we
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 (messenger), 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 | If | if | SCONJ | _ | 4 fails | mark |
| 2 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 3 messenger | det |
| 3 | messenger | messenger | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 fails | nsubj |
| 4 | fails | fail | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 7 lose | advcl |
| 5 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 7 lose | nsubj |
| 6 | must | must | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 7 lose | aux |
| 7 | lose | lose | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 8 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 9 life | nmod:poss |
| 9 | life | life | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 lose | obj |
| 10 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 14 betrayed | punct |
| 11 | lest | lest | SCONJ | _ | 14 betrayed | mark |
| 12 | we | we | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs | 14 betrayed | nsubj |
| 13 | be | be | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 14 betrayed | aux:pass |
| 14 | betrayed | betray | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 7 lose | advcl |
| 15 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 7 lose | punct |
| 16 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 7 lose | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | fail a condition, not said to happen | present | the messenger | vn succeed-74-3-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 2 | lose | must | messenger | messenger's life | vn succeed-74-3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent life=Eventuality | ||||
| 3 | betray | infinitive · passive | we | 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/pg503/34/72/