The Yellow Fairy Book, The Witch (28), sentence 48
The cat had scarcely finished speaking when the witch returned to see if the children had fulfilled their tasks.
Who acts: cat, witch, children · What happens: finish, speak, return, see, fulfil, task · To what, where: children · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Witch (28). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (cat, witch, children), 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 | The | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 2 cat | det |
| 2 | cat | cat | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 finished | nsubj |
| 3 | had | have | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 finished | aux |
| 4 | scarcely | scarcely | ADV | _ | 5 finished | advmod |
| 5 | finished | finish | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | root | root |
| 6 | speaking | speak | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 5 finished | xcomp |
| 7 | when | when | ADV | PronType=Int | 10 returned | advmod |
| 8 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 9 witch | det |
| 9 | witch | witch | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 returned | nsubj |
| 10 | returned | return | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 speaking | ccomp |
| 11 | to | to | PART | _ | 12 see | mark |
| 12 | see | see | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 10 returned | advcl |
| 13 | if | if | SCONJ | _ | 17 fulfilled | mark |
| 14 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 15 children | det |
| 15 | children | child | NOUN | Number=Plur | 17 fulfilled | nsubj:pass |
| 16 | had | have | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 17 fulfilled | aux |
| 17 | fulfilled | fulfil | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 12 see | ccomp |
| 18 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 19 tasks | nmod:poss |
| 19 | tasks | task | NOUN | Number=Plur | 17 fulfilled | obj |
| 20 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 finished | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | finish | past · perfect | the cat | scarcely property | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Affector clause=Eventuality | ||||
| 2 | speak speech: other | gerund | the cat not said here | tree rules | |||||
| 3 | return | past | the witch | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||||
| 4 | see | to-infinitive | the witch not said here | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V how S_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus | |||||
| 5 | fulfil a condition, not said to happen | past · perfect · passive | the children | tree rules | |||||
| 6 | task | children = child | nom task «act transitive»: poss=agent |
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/pg640/39/48/