The Blue Fairy Book, The Story of Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Paribanou, part 4, sentence 20

Prince Ahmed never expected that the Sultan his father would have asked such a thing, which at first appeared so difficult, not to say impossible.

Who acts: Prince, Sultan · What happens: not expect, ask, appear, not say · To what, where: thing, impossible · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Paribanou, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Prince, Sultan), 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	Prince	Prince	PROPN	Number=Sing	4 expected	nsubj
2	Ahmed	Ahmed	PROPN	Number=Sing	1 Prince	flat
3	never	never	ADV	PronType=Neg	4 expected	advmod
4	expected	expect	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
5	that	that	SCONJ	_	12 asked	mark
6	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	7 Sultan	det
7	Sultan	Sultan	PROPN	Number=Sing	12 asked	nsubj
8	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	9 father	nmod:poss
9	father	father	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 asked	nsubj
10	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	12 asked	aux
11	have	have	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	12 asked	aux
12	asked	ask	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	4 expected	ccomp
13	such	such	DET	PronType=Ind	15 thing	det:predet
14	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	15 thing	det
15	thing	thing	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 asked	obj
16	,	,	PUNCT	_	20 appeared	punct
17	which	which	PRON	PronType=Rel	20 appeared	obj
18	at	at	SCONJ	_	20 appeared	mark
19	first	first	ADV	NumForm=Word NumType=Ord	20 appeared	advmod
20	appeared	appear	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	15 thing	acl:relcl
21	so	so	ADV	_	22 difficult	advmod
22	difficult	difficult	ADJ	Degree=Pos	20 appeared	xcomp
23	,	,	PUNCT	_	26 say	punct
24	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	26 say	advmod
25	to	to	PART	_	26 say	mark
26	say	say	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	20 appeared	conj
27	impossible	impossible	ADJ	Degree=Pos	26 say	obj
28	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 expected	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	not expect	past	Prince			vn conjecture-29.5-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme
2	ask speech: ask	would · perfect	the Sultan	such thing		vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent thing=Recipient
3	appear	past		such thing	difficult, first property	vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location which=Theme
4	not say speech: assert	to-infinitive		impossible		vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent impossible=Topic

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/pg503/52/20/