The Blue Fairy Book, Chapter II, sentence 22

This engine made an incessant noise, like a water-mill, and we conjecture it is either some unknown animal, or the god he worships, but probably the latter, for he told us that he seldom did anything without consulting it.

Who acts: engine, we, animal · What happens: make, be, worship, tell, do, consult · To what, where: incessant noise, unknown animal, us, anything, engine · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Chapter II. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (engine, we, animal), 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	This	this	DET	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	2 engine	det
2	engine	engine	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 made	nsubj
3	made	make	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	an	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	6 noise	det
5	incessant	incessant	ADJ	Degree=Pos	6 noise	amod
6	noise	noise	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 made	obj
7	,	,	PUNCT	_	12 mill	punct
8	like	like	ADP	_	12 mill	case
9	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	12 mill	det
10	water	water	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 mill	compound
11	-	-	PUNCT	_	10 water	punct
12	mill	mill	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 made	obl
13	,	,	PUNCT	_	22 animal	punct
14	and	and	CCONJ	_	22 animal	cc
15	we	we	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	22 animal	nsubj
16	conjecture	conjecture	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 we	flat
17	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	22 animal	nsubj
18	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	22 animal	cop
19	either	either	CCONJ	_	22 animal	cc:preconj
20	some	some	DET	PronType=Ind	22 animal	det
21	unknown	unknown	ADJ	Degree=Pos	22 animal	amod
22	animal	animal	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 made	conj
23	,	,	PUNCT	_	26 god	punct
24	or	or	CCONJ	_	26 god	cc
25	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	26 god	det
26	god	god	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 made	parataxis
27	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	28 worships	nsubj
28	worships	worship	NOUN	Number=Plur	26 god	conj
29	,	,	PUNCT	_	33 latter	punct
30	but	but	CCONJ	_	33 latter	cc
31	probably	probably	ADV	_	33 latter	advmod
32	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	33 latter	det
33	latter	latter	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 made	parataxis
34	,	,	PUNCT	_	37 told	punct
35	for	for	SCONJ	_	37 told	mark
36	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	37 told	nsubj
37	told	tell	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 made	conj
38	us	we	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	37 told	iobj
39	that	that	SCONJ	_	42 did	mark
40	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	42 did	nsubj
41	seldom	seldom	ADV	_	42 did	advmod
42	did	do	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	37 told	advcl
43	anything	anything	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Ind	42 did	obj
44	without	without	SCONJ	_	45 consulting	mark
45	consulting	consult	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	42 did	advcl
46	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	45 consulting	obj
47	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 made	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	other	roles by
1	make	past	this engine	a incessant noise		like a water mill	vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset noise=Product
2	is a	present	we	some unknown animal			tree rules
3	worship		animal				tree rules
4	tell speech: assert	past	animal		us		vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent we=Recipient
5	do	past	animal	anything		seldom property	vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent anything=Eventuality
6	consult	gerund	animal not said here	engine			vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=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.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/44/22/