The Yellow Fairy Book, In the Land of Souls (21), sentence 11

At first he was puzzled, as there seemed no reason he should go in one direction more than another.

Who acts: thing · What happens: puzzle, seem, go · To what, where: thing, reason, one direction

This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, In the Land of Souls (21). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (thing), 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	At	at	ADP	_	2 first	case
2	first	first	ADV	NumForm=Word NumType=Ord	5 puzzled	obl
3	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	5 puzzled	nsubj
4	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 puzzled	aux:pass
5	puzzled	puzzle	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	root	root
6	,	,	PUNCT	_	9 seemed	punct
7	as	as	SCONJ	_	9 seemed	mark
8	there	there	PRON	PronType=Dem	9 seemed	expl
9	seemed	seem	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 puzzled	conj
10	no	no	DET	PronType=Neg	11 reason	det
11	reason	reason	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 seemed	obj
12	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 go	nsubj
13	should	should	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	14 go	aux
14	go	go	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	11 reason	acl:relcl
15	in	in	ADP	_	17 direction	case
16	one	one	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	17 direction	nummod
17	direction	direction	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 go	obl
18	more	more	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	17 direction	amod
19	than	than	ADP	_	20 another	case
20	another	another	DET	PronType=Ind	18 more	obl
21	.	.	PUNCT	_	5 puzzled	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	roles by
1	puzzle	past · passive		thing		vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: subject=Experiencer
2	seem	past		no reason	there	vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme reason=Attribute
3	go	should	thing	no reason not said here	one direction	vn meander-47.7 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location reason=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 Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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/pg640/28/11/