The Red Fairy Book, The Golden Branch, part 2, sentence 87

So the cats could always see the mice, but could not touch them, and the hungry mice were tormented by the sight and smell of the delicious morsels which they could never seize.

Who acts: cats, sight, mice, delicious morsels · What happens: see, not touch, torment, not seize, smell · To what, where: mice, hungry mice, delicious morsels

This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Branch, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (cats, sight, mice, delicious morsels), 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	So	so	ADV	_	6 see	advmod
2	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	3 cats	det
3	cats	cat	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 see	nsubj
4	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	6 see	aux
5	always	always	ADV	PronType=Tot	6 see	advmod
6	see	see	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
7	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	8 mice	det
8	mice	mouse	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 see	obj
9	,	,	PUNCT	_	13 touch	punct
10	but	but	CCONJ	_	13 touch	cc
11	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	13 touch	aux
12	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	13 touch	advmod
13	touch	touch	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	6 see	conj
14	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	13 touch	obj
15	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 tormented	punct
16	and	and	CCONJ	_	21 tormented	cc
17	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	19 mice	det
18	hungry	hungry	ADJ	Degree=Pos	19 mice	amod
19	mice	mouse	NOUN	Number=Plur	21 tormented	nsubj
20	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	21 tormented	aux:pass
21	tormented	torment	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	13 touch	advcl
22	by	by	ADP	_	24 sight	case
23	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	24 sight	det
24	sight	sight	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 tormented	obl
25	and	and	CCONJ	_	26 smell	cc
26	smell	smell	NOUN	Number=Sing	24 sight	conj
27	of	of	ADP	_	30 morsels	case
28	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	30 morsels	det
29	delicious	delicious	ADJ	Degree=Pos	30 morsels	amod
30	morsels	morsel	NOUN	Number=Plur	26 smell	nmod
31	which	which	PRON	PronType=Rel	35 seize	obj
32	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	35 seize	nsubj
33	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	35 seize	aux
34	never	never	ADV	PronType=Neg	35 seize	advmod
35	seize	seize	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	30 morsels	acl:relcl
36	.	.	PUNCT	_	6 see	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	see	could	the cats	the mice	always property	vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer mouse=Stimulus
2	not touch	could	the cats not said here	mice = mouse		vn contiguous_location-47.8-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme they=Co-Theme
3	torment	past · passive	the sight and smell of the delicious morsels	the hungry mice		vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Stimulus subject=Experiencer
4	not seize	could	mice = mouse	the delicious morsels		vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent which=Theme
5	smell		the delicious morsels			nom smell «cognition intransitive»: of=agent

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/pg540/35/87/