The Yellow Fairy Book, The Magic Ring, sentence 53

‘Truly,’ thought Martin to himself, ‘it would be more sensible to save a fellow-being’s life with this sand than to drag it about on one’s back, seeing what a weight it is.’

Who acts: it, weight · What happens: think, be, save, drag, see · To what, where: Martin, fellow life, sand

This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Magic Ring. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (it, weight), 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 thought	punct
2	Truly	truly	ADV	_	5 thought	advmod
3	,	,	PUNCT	_	2 Truly	punct
4	’	'	PUNCT	_	2 Truly	punct
5	thought	think	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
6	Martin	Martin	PROPN	Number=Sing	5 thought	obj
7	to	to	ADP	_	8 himself	case
8	himself	himself	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes	5 thought	obl
9	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 sensible	punct
10	‘	'	PUNCT	_	15 sensible	punct
11	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	15 sensible	nsubj
12	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	15 sensible	aux
13	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	15 sensible	cop
14	more	more	ADV	Degree=Cmp	15 sensible	advmod
15	sensible	sensible	ADJ	Degree=Pos	5 thought	parataxis
16	to	to	PART	_	17 save	mark
17	save	save	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	15 sensible	xcomp
18	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	23 life	det
19	fellow	fellow	NOUN	Number=Sing	23 life	compound
20	-	-	PUNCT	_	19 fellow	punct
21	being	be	AUX	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	22 ’s	cop
22	’s	's	PART	_	19 fellow	acl
23	life	life	NOUN	Number=Sing	17 save	obj
24	with	with	ADP	_	26 sand	case
25	this	this	DET	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	26 sand	det
26	sand	sand	NOUN	Number=Sing	17 save	obl
27	than	than	SCONJ	_	29 drag	mark
28	to	to	PART	_	29 drag	mark
29	drag	drag	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	15 sensible	advcl
30	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	29 drag	obj
31	about	about	ADV	_	29 drag	advmod
32	on	on	SCONJ	_	34 ’s	mark
33	one	one	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	34 ’s	nsubj
34	’s	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	29 drag	advcl
35	back	back	ADV	_	34 ’s	advmod
36	,	,	PUNCT	_	37 seeing	punct
37	seeing	see	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	15 sensible	parataxis
38	what	what	PRON	PronType=Int	37 seeing	obj
39	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	40 weight	det
40	weight	weight	NOUN	Number=Sing	38 what	nsubj
41	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	38 what	nsubj
42	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	38 what	cop
43	.	.	PUNCT	_	37 seeing	punct
44	’	'	PUNCT	_	15 sensible	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	other	roles by
1	think speech: other	past		Martin	Martin	truly property	vn wish-62 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot martin=Theme
2	is	would	it			sensible property	tree rules
3	save	to-infinitive		a fellow life		with this sand	vn get-13.5.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent life=Theme
4	drag	to-infinitive		sand		about property	vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme
5	see	gerund					vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer
6	is a	present	a weight				tree rules

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/pg640/33/53/