The Violet Fairy Book, A Tale of the Tontlawald, sentence 170

The girl tried to speak, but before she could sob out her thanks the old man had touched her softly on the head three times with his silver staff.

Who acts: girl · What happens: try, speak, sob out, touch · To what, where: thanks · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, A Tale of the Tontlawald. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (girl), 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	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	2 girl	det
2	girl	girl	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 tried	nsubj
3	tried	try	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	to	to	PART	_	5 speak	mark
5	speak	speak	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	3 tried	xcomp
6	,	,	PUNCT	_	11 sob	punct
7	but	but	CCONJ	_	11 sob	cc
8	before	before	SCONJ	_	11 sob	mark
9	she	she	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	11 sob	nsubj
10	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	11 sob	aux
11	sob	sob	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	3 tried	conj
12	out	out	ADP	_	11 sob	compound:prt
13	her	her	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	14 thanks	nmod:poss
14	thanks	thanks	NOUN	Number=Sing	19 touched	nsubj:pass
15	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	17 man	det
16	old	old	ADJ	Degree=Pos	17 man	amod
17	man	man	NOUN	Number=Sing	19 touched	nsubj
18	had	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	19 touched	aux
19	touched	touch	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	11 sob	advcl
20	her	her	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	21 softly	nmod:poss
21	softly	softly	ADV	_	19 touched	advmod
22	on	on	ADP	_	24 head	case
23	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	24 head	det
24	head	head	NOUN	Number=Sing	19 touched	obl
25	three	three	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	26 times	nummod
26	times	time	NOUN	Number=Plur	19 touched	obl:unmarked
27	with	with	ADP	_	30 staff	case
28	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	30 staff	nmod:poss
29	silver	silver	NOUN	Number=Sing	30 staff	compound
30	staff	staff	NOUN	Number=Sing	26 times	nmod
31	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 tried	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	try	past	the girl				vn try-61.1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality
2	speak speech: other not said to happen	to-infinitive	the girl not said here				vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent
3	sob out	could	girl				vn nonverbal_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent
4	touch	past · perfect · passive		girl's thanks	time	on the head; softly property	vn touch-20-1 «NP V NP PP.theme PP.instrument»: subject=Experiencer on head=Theme

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/pg641/2/170/