The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 23, sentence 42
‘What can it be?’ he said to his wife.
Who acts: two, man · What happens: be, say · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 23. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (two, man), 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 | _ | 5 be | punct |
| 2 | What | what | PRON | PronType=Int | 5 be | obj |
| 3 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 5 be | aux |
| 4 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 5 be | nsubj |
| 5 | be | be | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 9 said | ccomp |
| 6 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 5 be | punct |
| 7 | ’ | ' | PUNCT | _ | 5 be | punct |
| 8 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 9 said | nsubj |
| 9 | said | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 10 | to | to | ADP | _ | 12 wife | case |
| 11 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 12 wife | nmod:poss |
| 12 | wife | wife | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 said | obl |
| 13 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 9 said | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | can | can | two | vn representation-110.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot what=Theme | |||||
| 2 | say speech: assert | past | man | to man's wife | vn indicate-78-1 «NP V PP.recipient whether/if S»: agent=Pivot to wife=Experiencer clause=Topic |
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/pg5615/23/42/