The Violet Fairy Book, The Fairy of the Dawn, part 3, sentence 41

He was not sure if he was to lie, or whether he had better tell the truth.

Who acts: Petru · What happens: not be, be, tell · To what, where: truth · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Fairy of the Dawn, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Petru), 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 sure	nsubj
2	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 sure	cop
3	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	4 sure	advmod
4	sure	sure	ADJ	Degree=Pos	root	root
5	if	if	SCONJ	_	9 lie	mark
6	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	9 lie	nsubj
7	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	9 lie	cop
8	to	to	PART	_	9 lie	mark
9	lie	lie	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	4 sure	ccomp
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	16 tell	punct
11	or	or	CCONJ	_	16 tell	cc
12	whether	whether	SCONJ	_	14 had	mark
13	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 had	nsubj
14	had	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	16 tell	aux
15	better	good	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	14 had	xcomp
16	tell	tell	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	9 lie	conj
17	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	18 truth	det
18	truth	truth	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 tell	obj
19	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 sure	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	not is	past	Petru		sure property	tree rules
2	is a condition, not said to happen	past	Petru		lie property	tree rules
3	tell speech: assert	past	Petru not said here	the truth		vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent truth=Recipient

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/pg641/21/41/