The Violet Fairy Book, Two in a Sack, sentence 1
What a life that poor man led with his wife, to be sure!
Who acts: life · What happens: lead, be · To what, where: that
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Two in a Sack. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (life), 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 | What | what | DET | PronType=Int | 3 life | det:predet |
| 2 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 3 life | det |
| 3 | life | life | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 led | nsubj |
| 4 | that | that | PRON | PronType=Rel | 7 led | obl |
| 5 | poor | poor | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 6 man | amod |
| 6 | man | man | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 led | nsubj |
| 7 | led | lead | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 8 | with | with | ADP | _ | 10 wife | case |
| 9 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 10 wife | nmod:poss |
| 10 | wife | wife | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 led | obl |
| 11 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 14 sure | punct |
| 12 | to | to | PART | _ | 14 sure | mark |
| 13 | be | be | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 14 sure | cop |
| 14 | sure | sure | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 7 led | conj |
| 15 | ! | ! | PUNCT | _ | 7 led | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | lead | past | what life | that | with man's wife | vn result-27.2 «NP V PP»: agent=Precondition | |||
| 2 | is | to-infinitive | what life not said here | sure property | tree rules |
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/pg641/17/1/