The Yellow Fairy Book, The Dragon and His Grandmother, sentence 51
‘What sort of a riddle is it?’ she asked.
Who acts: sort · What happens: be, ask, sort · To what, where: riddle · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Dragon and His Grandmother. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sort), 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 | _ | 7 is | punct |
| 2 | What | what | DET | PronType=Int | 3 sort | det |
| 3 | sort | sort | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 is | nsubj |
| 4 | of | of | ADP | _ | 6 riddle | case |
| 5 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 riddle | det |
| 6 | riddle | riddle | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 sort | nmod |
| 7 | is | be | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 12 asked | ccomp |
| 8 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 7 is | expl |
| 9 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 7 is | punct |
| 10 | ’ | ' | PUNCT | _ | 7 is | punct |
| 11 | she | she | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 12 asked | nsubj |
| 12 | asked | ask | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 13 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 12 asked | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | be | present | what sort of a riddle | riddle | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||
| 2 | ask speech: ask | past | sort | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 3 | sort | a riddle | nom sort «cognition 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/pg640/9/51/