The Violet Fairy Book, Stan Bolovan, sentence 191
Was there nothing he could say to get rid of the monster?
Who acts: Stan · What happens: be, say, get · Speech: someone speaks here
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 | Was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 there | cop |
| 2 | there | there | ADV | PronType=Dem | root | root |
| 3 | nothing | nothing | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Neg | 2 there | advcl |
| 4 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 6 say | nsubj |
| 5 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 6 say | aux |
| 6 | say | say | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 3 nothing | acl:relcl |
| 7 | to | to | PART | _ | 8 get | mark |
| 8 | get | get | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 6 say | xcomp |
| 9 | rid | rid | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 8 get | xcomp |
| 10 | of | of | ADP | _ | 12 monster | case |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 12 monster | det |
| 12 | monster | monster | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 rid | obl |
| 13 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 2 there | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is | past | there property | tree rules | |||||
| 2 | say speech: assert | could | Stan | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V how S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 3 | get | to-infinitive | Stan not said here | rid property | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Experiencer |
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/pg641/13/191/