The Yellow Fairy Book, The Hazel-nut Child (29), sentence 3

There was once upon a time a couple who had no children, and they prayed Heaven every day to send them a child, though it were no bigger than a hazel-nut.

Who acts: couple, children · What happens: be, have, pray, send, not be · To what, where: children, Heaven

This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Hazel-nut Child (29). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (couple, 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	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	upon	upon	ADP	_	6 time	case
5	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	6 time	det
6	time	time	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 was	obl
7	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	8 couple	det
8	couple	couple	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 time	appos
9	who	who	PRON	PronType=Rel	10 had	nsubj
10	had	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	8 couple	acl:relcl
11	no	no	DET	PronType=Neg	12 children	det
12	children	child	NOUN	Number=Plur	10 had	obj
13	,	,	PUNCT	_	16 prayed	punct
14	and	and	CCONJ	_	16 prayed	cc
15	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	16 prayed	nsubj
16	prayed	pray	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 was	parataxis
17	Heaven	Heaven	PROPN	Number=Sing	16 prayed	obj
18	every	every	DET	PronType=Tot	19 day	det
19	day	day	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 prayed	obl:unmarked
20	to	to	PART	_	21 send	mark
21	send	send	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	19 day	acl
22	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 send	obj
23	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	24 child	det
24	child	child	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 send	obj
25	,	,	PUNCT	_	30 bigger	punct
26	though	though	SCONJ	_	30 bigger	mark
27	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	30 bigger	nsubj
28	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	30 bigger	cop
29	no	no	ADV	_	30 bigger	advmod
30	bigger	big	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	16 prayed	conj
31	than	than	ADP	_	35 nut	case
32	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	35 nut	det
33	hazel	hazel	NOUN	Number=Sing	35 nut	compound
34	-	-	PUNCT	_	33 hazel	punct
35	nut	nut	NOUN	Number=Sing	30 bigger	obl
36	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 was	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	be	past			there	time	once property	vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
2	have	past	a couple	no children				vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=Patient
3	pray	past	children = child	Heaven		day		tree rules
4	send	to-infinitive	children = child not said here	children = child				vn send-11.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent they=Destination child=Theme
5	not is	past	couple				than a hazel nut; big property	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/pg640/40/3/