The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 19, sentence 29

Then came some boys and prayed him, “master, give us work,’ but he answered them, ‘Of what use can you be, weaklings as you are!

Who acts: boys, man, you · What happens: come, pray, give, answer, use, be · To what, where: man, work, us, boys, weaklings · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 19. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (boys, man, you), 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	Then	then	ADV	PronType=Dem	2 came	advmod
2	came	come	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	some	some	DET	PronType=Ind	4 boys	det
4	boys	boy	NOUN	Number=Plur	2 came	nsubj
5	and	and	CCONJ	_	6 prayed	cc
6	prayed	pray	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 came	conj
7	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	6 prayed	obj
8	,	,	PUNCT	_	10 master	punct
9	“	"	PUNCT	_	10 master	punct
10	master	master	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 prayed	obl
11	,	,	PUNCT	_	12 give	punct
12	give	give	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 came	parataxis
13	us	we	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	12 give	iobj
14	work	work	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 give	obj
15	,	,	PUNCT	_	12 give	punct
16	’	'	PUNCT	_	12 give	punct
17	but	but	CCONJ	_	19 answered	cc
18	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	19 answered	nsubj
19	answered	answer	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 came	conj
20	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	19 answered	obj
21	,	,	PUNCT	_	25 use	punct
22	‘	'	PUNCT	_	25 use	punct
23	Of	of	ADP	_	25 use	case
24	what	what	PRON	PronType=Int	25 use	nsubj
25	use	use	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	19 answered	conj
26	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	30 weaklings	aux
27	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	30 weaklings	nsubj
28	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	30 weaklings	cop
29	,	,	PUNCT	_	30 weaklings	punct
30	weaklings	weakling	NOUN	Number=Plur	25 use	obj
31	as	as	SCONJ	_	33 are	mark
32	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	33 are	nsubj
33	are	be	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	25 use	advcl
34	!	!	PUNCT	_	2 came	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	when	other	roles by
1	come	past	some boys			then		tree rules
2	pray	past	some boys not said here	man			master obl	tree rules
3	give in a quote	infinitive		work	us			vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent we=Recipient work=Theme
4	answer speech: assert in a quote	past	man		boys = boy			vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent they=Eventuality
5	use in a quote	present						vn eat-39.1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
6	is a in a quote	can	you	weaklings				tree rules
7	does in a quote	present	you					vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme

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 Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (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/pg5615/19/29/