The Yellow Fairy Book, The Tinder-box, sentence 95

They all say she is very pretty, but what’s the use of that if she has to sit for ever in the great copper castle with all the towers?

Who acts: Princess, Witch · What happens: say, be, have, sit, use · To what, where: great copper castle, that · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tinder-box. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Princess, Witch), 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	They	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 say	nsubj
2	all	all	DET	PronType=Tot	3 say	advmod
3	say	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	she	she	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	7 pretty	nsubj
5	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	7 pretty	cop
6	very	very	ADV	_	7 pretty	advmod
7	pretty	pretty	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 say	ccomp
8	,	,	PUNCT	_	11 ’s	punct
9	but	but	CCONJ	_	11 ’s	cc
10	what	what	PRON	PronType=Int	11 ’s	nsubj
11	’s	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	3 say	conj
12	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 use	det
13	use	use	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 ’s	obj
14	of	of	ADP	_	15 that	case
15	that	that	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	13 use	nmod
16	if	if	SCONJ	_	18 has	mark
17	she	she	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	18 has	nsubj
18	has	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	11 ’s	advcl
19	to	to	PART	_	20 sit	mark
20	sit	sit	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	18 has	xcomp
21	for	for	ADP	_	22 ever	case
22	ever	ever	ADV	PronType=Ind	20 sit	obl
23	in	in	ADP	_	27 castle	case
24	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	27 castle	det
25	great	great	ADJ	Degree=Pos	27 castle	amod
26	copper	copper	NOUN	Number=Sing	27 castle	compound
27	castle	castle	NOUN	Number=Sing	20 sit	obl
28	with	with	ADP	_	31 towers	case
29	all	all	DET	PronType=Tot	31 towers	det:predet
30	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	31 towers	det
31	towers	tower	NOUN	Number=Plur	27 castle	nmod
32	?	?	PUNCT	_	3 say	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	say speech: assert	present	Princess				vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent
2	is	present	Witch			pretty property	tree rules
3	have a condition, not said to happen	present	Witch				tree rules
4	sit	to-infinitive	Witch not said here		the great copper castle with all towers		vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent in castle=Location
5	use			that			nom use «act transitive»: of=patient

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/pg640/46/95/