The Red Fairy Book, The Wonderful Birch, sentence 147

They took it to the court, and tried to pacify it in every conceivable way, but its crying never ceased.

Who acts: Spit, crying · What happens: take, try, pacify, cry, not cease · To what, where: care, court, conceivable way

This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Birch. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Spit, crying), 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	They	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 took	nsubj
2	took	take	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 took	obj
4	to	to	ADP	_	6 court	case
5	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	6 court	det
6	court	court	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 took	obl
7	,	,	PUNCT	_	9 tried	punct
8	and	and	CCONJ	_	9 tried	cc
9	tried	try	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 took	conj
10	to	to	PART	_	11 pacify	mark
11	pacify	pacify	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	9 tried	xcomp
12	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	11 pacify	obj
13	in	in	ADP	_	16 way	case
14	every	every	DET	PronType=Tot	16 way	det
15	conceivable	conceivable	ADJ	Degree=Pos	16 way	amod
16	way	way	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 pacify	obl
17	,	,	PUNCT	_	22 ceased	punct
18	but	but	CCONJ	_	22 ceased	cc
19	its	its	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	22 ceased	nmod:poss
20	crying	cry	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	22 ceased	csubj:pass
21	never	never	ADV	PronType=Neg	22 ceased	advmod
22	ceased	cease	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	2 took	conj
23	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 took	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	roles by
1	take	past	Spit	care	the court	vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent it=Theme to court=Destination
2	try	past	Spit not said here			vn try-61.1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality
3	pacify not said to happen	to-infinitive	Spit not said here	care	every conceivable way	vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Stimulus it=Experiencer
4	cry speech: express	gerund				vn manner_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent
5	not cease	participle	crying			vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality

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 Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (public domain in the USA). Tree: Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.

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