The Yellow Fairy Book, The Dragon of the North(2), sentence 18

‘Mortal men have but little wisdom, and can give you no help, but the birds of the air would be better guides to you if you could learn their language.

Who acts: Mortal men, birds, you · What happens: have, give, be, learn · To what, where: little wisdom, help, you, better guides, language

This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Dragon of the North(2). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Mortal men, birds, you), 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	_	4 have	punct
2	Mortal	mortal	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 men	amod
3	men	man	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 have	nsubj
4	have	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
5	but	but	CCONJ	_	7 wisdom	cc
6	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	7 wisdom	amod
7	wisdom	wisdom	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 have	obj
8	,	,	PUNCT	_	11 give	punct
9	and	and	CCONJ	_	11 give	cc
10	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	11 give	aux
11	give	give	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	4 have	conj
12	you	you	PRON	Case=Acc Person=2 PronType=Prs	11 give	iobj
13	no	no	DET	PronType=Neg	14 help	det
14	help	help	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 give	obj
15	,	,	PUNCT	_	25 guides	punct
16	but	but	CCONJ	_	25 guides	cc
17	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	18 birds	det
18	birds	bird	NOUN	Number=Plur	25 guides	nsubj
19	of	of	ADP	_	21 air	case
20	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	21 air	det
21	air	air	NOUN	Number=Sing	18 birds	nmod
22	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	25 guides	aux
23	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	25 guides	cop
24	better	good	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	25 guides	amod
25	guides	guide	NOUN	Number=Plur	11 give	iobj
26	to	to	ADP	_	27 you	case
27	you	you	PRON	Case=Acc Person=2 PronType=Prs	25 guides	nmod
28	if	if	SCONJ	_	31 learn	mark
29	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	31 learn	nsubj
30	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	31 learn	aux
31	learn	learn	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	11 give	advcl
32	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	33 language	nmod:poss
33	language	language	NOUN	Number=Sing	31 learn	obj
34	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 have	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	roles by
1	have	present	Mortal men	little wisdom		vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent wisdom=Patient
2	give	can	Mortal men not said here	no help	you	tree rules
3	is a	would	the birds of the air	better guides	you	tree rules
4	learn a condition, not said to happen	could	you	birds's language		vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent language=Topic

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/pg640/5/18/