The Red Fairy Book, The Wonderful Birch, sentence 4

‘If you spit, you miserable creature, if you spit into the sheath of my knife, or if you run between my legs, I shall change you into a black sheep.’

Who acts: you, I · What happens: spit, run, change · To what, where: you, sheath, legs

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 (you, I), 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	‘	'	PUNCT	_	4 spit	punct
2	If	if	SCONJ	_	4 spit	mark
3	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	4 spit	nsubj
4	spit	spit	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
5	,	,	PUNCT	_	4 spit	punct
6	you	you	PRON	Case=Acc Person=2 PronType=Prs	4 spit	obj
7	miserable	miserable	ADJ	Degree=Pos	8 creature	amod
8	creature	creature	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 spit	obl:unmarked
9	,	,	PUNCT	_	12 spit	punct
10	if	if	SCONJ	_	12 spit	mark
11	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	12 spit	nsubj
12	spit	spit	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	4 spit	advcl
13	into	into	ADP	_	15 sheath	case
14	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	15 sheath	det
15	sheath	sheath	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 spit	obl
16	of	of	ADP	_	18 knife	case
17	my	my	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Sing Person=1 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	18 knife	nmod:poss
18	knife	knife	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 sheath	nmod
19	,	,	PUNCT	_	30 change	punct
20	or	or	CCONJ	_	30 change	cc
21	if	if	SCONJ	_	23 run	mark
22	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	23 run	nsubj
23	run	run	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	30 change	advcl
24	between	between	ADP	_	26 legs	case
25	my	my	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Sing Person=1 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	26 legs	nmod:poss
26	legs	leg	NOUN	Number=Plur	23 run	obl
27	,	,	PUNCT	_	23 run	punct
28	I	I	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	30 change	nsubj
29	shall	shall	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	30 change	aux
30	change	change	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	12 spit	conj
31	you	you	PRON	Case=Acc Person=2 PronType=Prs	30 change	obj
32	into	into	ADP	_	35 sheep	case
33	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	35 sheep	det
34	black	black	ADJ	Degree=Pos	35 sheep	amod
35	sheep	sheep	NOUN	Number=Sing	30 change	obl
36	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 spit	punct
37	’	'	PUNCT	_	4 spit	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	spit	present	you	you		miserable creature obl:unmarked	vn breathe-40.1.2 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent you=Theme
2	spit a condition, not said to happen	present	you		the sheath of my knife		vn breathe-40.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent
3	run a condition, not said to happen	present	you		my legs		vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme between leg=Trajectory
4	change	shall	I	you		into a black sheep result	vn turn-26.6.1-1 «NP V NP.patient PP.result»: agent=Agent you=Patient into sheep=Result

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.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/14/4/