The Violet Fairy Book, Two in a Sack, sentence 108
He had hardly said the words before they were back in the sack again.
Who acts: husband, words · What happens: say, be · To what, where: words, sack · Speech: someone speaks here
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 (husband, words), 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 | He | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 4 said | nsubj |
| 2 | had | have | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 said | aux |
| 3 | hardly | hardly | ADV | _ | 4 said | advmod |
| 4 | said | say | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | root | root |
| 5 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 6 words | det |
| 6 | words | word | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 said | obj |
| 7 | before | before | SCONJ | _ | 10 back | mark |
| 8 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 10 back | nsubj |
| 9 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 10 back | cop |
| 10 | back | back | ADV | _ | 4 said | advmod |
| 11 | in | in | ADP | _ | 13 sack | case |
| 12 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 13 sack | det |
| 13 | sack | sack | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 back | obl |
| 14 | again | again | ADV | _ | 10 back | advmod |
| 15 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 said | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | say speech: assert | past · perfect | husband | the words | hardly property | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent word=Topic | |||
| 2 | is | past | words = word | the sack | again | back 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/pg641/17/108/