The Yellow Fairy Book, A Story About a Darning-needle, sentence 20

And she laughed to herself; you can never see when a Darning-needle is laughing.

Who acts: needle, you, Darning needle · What happens: laugh, not see · To what, where: needle · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, A Story About a Darning-needle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (needle, you, Darning needle), 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	And	and	CCONJ	_	3 laughed	cc
2	she	she	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 laughed	nsubj
3	laughed	laugh	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	to	to	ADP	_	5 herself	case
5	herself	herself	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes	3 laughed	obl
6	;	;	PUNCT	_	10 see	punct
7	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	10 see	nsubj
8	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	10 see	aux
9	never	never	ADV	PronType=Neg	10 see	advmod
10	see	see	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	3 laughed	conj
11	when	when	ADV	PronType=Int	17 laughing	advmod
12	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	15 needle	det
13	Darning	darning	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 needle	compound
14	-	-	PUNCT	_	13 Darning	punct
15	needle	needle	NOUN	Number=Sing	17 laughing	nsubj
16	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	17 laughing	aux
17	laughing	laugh	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	10 see	ccomp
18	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 laughed	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	to whom	roles by
1	laugh	past	needle	needle	vn nonverbal_expression-40.2 «NP V PP.recipient»: agent=Agent to herself=Recipient
2	not see	can	you		vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V how S_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus
3	laugh	present · progressive	a Darning needle		vn nonverbal_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=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/pg640/51/20/