The Violet Fairy Book, Stan Bolovan, sentence 127
But he only took an old knife out of his pocket and began to scratch up the earth near the brook.
Who acts: Stan · What happens: take, begin, scratch up · To what, where: old knife, pocket, earth, brook
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Stan Bolovan. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Stan), 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 | But | but | CCONJ | _ | 4 took | cc |
| 2 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 4 took | nsubj |
| 3 | only | only | ADV | _ | 4 took | advmod |
| 4 | took | take | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 5 | an | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 7 knife | det |
| 6 | old | old | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 7 knife | amod |
| 7 | knife | knife | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 took | obj |
| 8 | out | out | ADP | _ | 11 pocket | case |
| 9 | of | of | ADP | _ | 11 pocket | case |
| 10 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 11 pocket | nmod:poss |
| 11 | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 took | obl | ||
| 12 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 13 began | cc |
| 13 | began | begin | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 took | conj |
| 14 | to | to | PART | _ | 15 scratch | mark |
| 15 | scratch | scratch | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 13 began | xcomp |
| 16 | up | up | ADP | _ | 15 scratch | compound:prt |
| 17 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 18 earth | det |
| 18 | earth | earth | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 scratch | obj |
| 19 | near | near | ADP | _ | 21 brook | case |
| 20 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 21 brook | det |
| 21 | brook | brook | NOUN | Number=Sing | 18 earth | nmod |
| 22 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 took | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | take | past | Stan | a old knife | Stan's pocket | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP PP.initial_location»: agent=Agent knife=Theme out pocket=Initial_Location | |||
| 2 | begin | past | Stan not said here | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | |||||
| 3 | scratch up | to-infinitive | Stan not said here | the earth | the brook | vn swat-18.2 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent earth=Patient near brook=Location |
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/pg641/13/127/