The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 4, sentence 109

There was once a box of matches which lay between a tinder-box and an old iron pot, and they told the story of their youth.

Who acts: box, matches · What happens: be, lie, tell · To what, where: tinder box, story · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (box, matches), 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	There	there	PRON	PronType=Dem	2 was	expl
2	was	be	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	once	once	ADV	NumForm=Word NumType=Mult	2 was	advmod
4	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	5 box	det
5	box	box	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 was	nsubj
6	of	of	ADP	_	7 matches	case
7	matches	match	NOUN	Number=Plur	5 box	nmod
8	which	which	PRON	PronType=Rel	9 lay	nsubj
9	lay	lie	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	7 matches	acl:relcl
10	between	between	ADP	_	14 box	case
11	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	14 box	det
12	tinder	tinder	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 box	compound
13	-	-	PUNCT	_	12 tinder	punct
14	box	box	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 lay	obl
15	and	and	CCONJ	_	19 pot	cc
16	an	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	19 pot	det
17	old	old	ADJ	Degree=Pos	19 pot	amod
18	iron	iron	NOUN	Number=Sing	19 pot	compound
19	pot	pot	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 box	conj
20	,	,	PUNCT	_	23 told	punct
21	and	and	CCONJ	_	23 told	cc
22	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	23 told	nsubj
23	told	tell	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 was	parataxis
24	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	25 story	det
25	story	story	NOUN	Number=Sing	23 told	obj
26	of	of	ADP	_	28 youth	case
27	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	28 youth	nmod:poss
28	youth	youth	NOUN	Number=Sing	25 story	nmod
29	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 was	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	be	past	a box of matches		there	once property	vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
2	lie	past	matches		a tinder box and a old iron pot		vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent between box=Location
3	tell speech: assert	past	matches = match	the story of matches's youth			vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent story=Recipient

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/pg5615/4/109/