The Violet Fairy Book, A Tale of the Tontlawald, sentence 75
The guests talked softly, but their speech was strange to Elsa, and she understood nothing of what was said.
Who acts: guests, speech, Elsa, eyes · What happens: talk, be, understand, say, speak · To what, where: Elsa, nothing · 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 (guests, speech, Elsa, eyes), 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 guests | det |
| 2 | guests | guest | NOUN | Number=Plur | 3 talked | nsubj |
| 3 | talked | talk | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | softly | softly | ADV | _ | 3 talked | advmod |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 10 strange | punct |
| 6 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 10 strange | cc |
| 7 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 8 speech | nmod:poss |
| 8 | speech | speech | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 strange | nsubj |
| 9 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 10 strange | cop |
| 10 | strange | strange | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 talked | parataxis |
| 11 | to | to | ADP | _ | 12 Elsa | case |
| 12 | Elsa | Elsa | PROPN | Number=Sing | 10 strange | obl |
| 13 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 16 understood | punct |
| 14 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 16 understood | cc |
| 15 | she | she | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 16 understood | nsubj |
| 16 | understood | understand | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 3 talked | conj |
| 17 | nothing | nothing | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Neg | 16 understood | obj |
| 18 | of | of | ADP | _ | 19 what | case |
| 19 | what | what | PRON | PronType=Rel | 17 nothing | nmod |
| 20 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 21 said | aux:pass |
| 21 | said | say | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 19 what | acl:relcl |
| 22 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 talked | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | talk | past | the guests | softly property | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent | ||||
| 2 | is | past | eyes's speech | Elsa | strange property | tree rules | |||
| 3 | understand | past | Elsa | nothing | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer nothing=Stimulus | ||||
| 4 | say speech: assert | past · passive | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S» | ||||||
| 5 | speak | eyes = eye | nom speech «communication transitive»: poss=agent |
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/pg641/2/75/