The Red Fairy Book, Soria Moria Castle, sentence 89

They chattered much about many things, and told Halvor of this and of that, and at last he asked them if they had never had any child.

Who acts: vessels, Halvor · What happens: chatter, tell, ask, not have · To what, where: Halvor, vessels, last, child · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Soria Moria Castle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (vessels, Halvor), 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 chattered	nsubj
2	chattered	chatter	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	much	much	ADV	_	2 chattered	advmod
4	about	about	ADP	_	6 things	case
5	many	many	ADJ	Degree=Pos	6 things	amod
6	things	thing	NOUN	Number=Plur	2 chattered	obl
7	,	,	PUNCT	_	9 told	punct
8	and	and	CCONJ	_	9 told	cc
9	told	tell	VERB	Mood=Ind Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 chattered	parataxis
10	Halvor	Halvor	PROPN	Number=Sing	9 told	iobj
11	of	of	ADP	_	12 this	case
12	this	this	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	9 told	obl
13	and	and	CCONJ	_	15 that	cc
14	of	of	ADP	_	15 that	case
15	that	that	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	9 told	conj
16	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 asked	punct
17	and	and	CCONJ	_	21 asked	cc
18	at	at	ADP	_	19 last	case
19	last	last	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 asked	obl
20	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 asked	nsubj
21	asked	ask	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 chattered	parataxis
22	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 asked	obj
23	if	if	SCONJ	_	27 had	mark
24	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	27 had	nsubj
25	had	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	27 had	aux
26	never	never	ADV	PronType=Neg	27 had	advmod
27	had	have	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	21 asked	ccomp
28	any	any	DET	PronType=Ind	29 child	det
29	child	child	NOUN	Number=Sing	27 had	obj
30	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 chattered	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	other	roles by
1	chatter	past	vessels = vessel				about many things	vn chit_chat-37.6 «NP V PP.topic»: agent=Agent about thing=Topic
2	tell speech: assert	past			Halvor		of this	vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent halvor=Recipient
3	ask speech: ask	past	Halvor		vessels = vessel	last		vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S»: agent=Agent they=Recipient clause=Topic
4	not have a condition, not said to happen	past · perfect	vessels = vessel	any child				vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=Patient

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/pg540/6/89/