The Violet Fairy Book, The Violet Fairy Book, sentence 20

Their tastes remain like the tastes of their naked ancestors, thousands of years ago, and they seem to like fairy tales better than history, poetry, geography, or arithmetic, just as grown-up people like novels better than anything else.

Who acts: tastes, people · What happens: remain, seem, like, grow up, taste · To what, where: fairy tales, people, naked ancestors

This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Violet Fairy Book. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (tastes, people), 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	Their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	2 tastes	nmod:poss
2	tastes	taste	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 remain	nsubj
3	remain	remain	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	like	like	ADP	_	6 tastes	case
5	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	6 tastes	det
6	tastes	taste	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 remain	obl
7	of	of	ADP	_	10 ancestors	case
8	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	10 ancestors	nmod:poss
9	naked	naked	ADJ	Degree=Pos	10 ancestors	amod
10	ancestors	ancestor	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 tastes	nmod
11	,	,	PUNCT	_	12 thousands	punct
12	thousands	thousand	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 tastes	conj
13	of	of	ADP	_	14 years	case
14	years	year	NOUN	Number=Plur	12 thousands	nmod
15	ago	ago	ADV	_	12 thousands	advmod
16	,	,	PUNCT	_	19 seem	punct
17	and	and	CCONJ	_	19 seem	cc
18	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	19 seem	nsubj
19	seem	seem	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	3 remain	conj
20	to	to	PART	_	21 like	mark
21	like	like	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	19 seem	xcomp
22	fairy	fairy	NOUN	Number=Sing	23 tales	compound
23	tales	tale	NOUN	Number=Plur	21 like	obj
24	better	well	ADV	Degree=Cmp	21 like	advmod
25	than	than	ADP	_	26 history	case
26	history	history	NOUN	Number=Sing	24 better	obl
27	,	,	PUNCT	_	28 poetry	punct
28	poetry	poetry	NOUN	Number=Sing	26 history	conj
29	,	,	PUNCT	_	30 geography	punct
30	geography	geography	NOUN	Number=Sing	26 history	conj
31	,	,	PUNCT	_	33 arithmetic	punct
32	or	or	CCONJ	_	33 arithmetic	cc
33	arithmetic	arithmetic	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 remain	parataxis
34	,	,	PUNCT	_	37 grown	punct
35	just	just	ADV	_	37 grown	advmod
36	as	as	ADV	_	37 grown	advmod
37	grown	grow	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	33 arithmetic	conj
38	-	-	PUNCT	_	39 up	punct
39	up	up	ADP	_	37 grown	compound:prt
40	people	people	NOUN	Number=Plur	37 grown	obj
41	like	like	ADP	_	42 novels	case
42	novels	novel	NOUN	Number=Plur	40 people	nmod
43	better	well	ADV	Degree=Cmp	37 grown	advmod
44	than	than	ADP	_	45 anything	case
45	anything	anything	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Ind	43 better	obl
46	else	else	ADV	_	45 anything	advmod
47	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 remain	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	remain	present	people's tastes		like the tastes of people's naked ancestors and thousands of years	vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
2	seem	present	people			vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Theme clause=Attribute
3	like	to-infinitive	people not said here	fairy tales	well property	vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot tale=Theme
4	grow up	participle	people's tastes not said here	people	like novels; well property	vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location people=Theme
5	taste		people			nom taste «cognition transitive»: poss=agent
6	taste			people's naked ancestors		nom taste «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 Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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/pg641/1/20/