The Blue Fairy Book, Trusty John, sentence 31

The faithful servant pondered long how they were to set about the matter, for it was said to be difficult even to get into the presence of the Princess.

Who acts: faithful servant, leaves · What happens: ponder, set, say, be, get · To what, where: servant, presence · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Trusty John. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (faithful servant, leaves), 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	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	3 servant	det
2	faithful	faithful	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 servant	amod
3	servant	servant	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 pondered	nsubj
4	pondered	ponder	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
5	long	long	ADV	Degree=Pos	4 pondered	advmod
6	how	how	ADV	PronType=Int	10 set	advmod
7	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	10 set	nsubj
8	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	10 set	aux
9	to	to	PART	_	10 set	mark
10	set	set	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	4 pondered	advcl
11	about	about	ADP	_	13 matter	case
12	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 matter	det
13	matter	matter	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 set	obl
14	,	,	PUNCT	_	18 said	punct
15	for	for	SCONJ	_	18 said	mark
16	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	18 said	nsubj
17	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	18 said	aux:pass
18	said	say	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	10 set	parataxis
19	to	to	PART	_	21 difficult	mark
20	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	21 difficult	cop
21	difficult	difficult	ADJ	Degree=Pos	18 said	advcl
22	even	even	ADV	_	24 get	advmod
23	to	to	PART	_	24 get	mark
24	get	get	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	21 difficult	ccomp
25	into	into	ADP	_	27 presence	case
26	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	27 presence	det
27	presence	presence	NOUN	Number=Sing	24 get	obl
28	of	of	ADP	_	30 Princess	case
29	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	30 Princess	det
30	Princess	Princess	PROPN	Number=Sing	27 presence	nmod
31	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 pondered	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	ponder	past	the faithful servant			long property	vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
2	set	past	leaves = leaf			about the matter	vn put-9.1-2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent about matter=Destination
3	say speech: assert	past · passive		servant			vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: subject=Topic
4	is	to-infinitive				difficult property	tree rules
5	get	to-infinitive			the presence of the Princess		vn escape-51.1 «NP V PP.destination»: agent=Theme into presence=Destination

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/pg503/41/31/