The Violet Fairy Book, Jesper Who Herded the Hares, sentence 33

But then a strange thing happened: the pearls began to lose their whiteness and grew quite dim in colour; then they grew blacker and blacker till at last they were just like so many cinders.

Who acts: strange thing, pearls · What happens: happen, begin, lose, grow, be · To what, where: whiteness

This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Jesper Who Herded the Hares. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (strange thing, pearls), 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	But	but	CCONJ	_	6 happened	cc
2	then	then	ADV	PronType=Dem	6 happened	advmod
3	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	5 thing	det
4	strange	strange	ADJ	Degree=Pos	5 thing	amod
5	thing	thing	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 happened	nsubj
6	happened	happen	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
7	:	:	PUNCT	_	10 began	punct
8	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	9 pearls	det
9	pearls	pearl	NOUN	Number=Plur	10 began	nsubj
10	began	begin	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	6 happened	parataxis
11	to	to	PART	_	12 lose	mark
12	lose	lose	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	10 began	xcomp
13	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	14 whiteness	nmod:poss
14	whiteness	whiteness	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 lose	obj
15	and	and	CCONJ	_	16 grew	cc
16	grew	grow	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	10 began	conj
17	quite	quite	ADV	_	18 dim	advmod
18	dim	dim	ADJ	Degree=Pos	16 grew	xcomp
19	in	in	ADP	_	20 colour	case
20	colour	colour	NOUN	Number=Sing	18 dim	obl
21	;	;	PUNCT	_	24 grew	punct
22	then	then	ADV	PronType=Dem	24 grew	advmod
23	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	24 grew	nsubj
24	grew	grow	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	6 happened	conj
25	blacker	black	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	24 grew	xcomp
26	and	and	CCONJ	_	27 blacker	cc
27	blacker	black	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	25 blacker	conj
28	till	till	ADP	_	37 cinders	case
29	at	at	ADP	_	30 last	case
30	last	last	ADJ	Degree=Pos	37 cinders	amod
31	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	37 cinders	nsubj
32	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	37 cinders	cop
33	just	just	ADV	_	37 cinders	advmod
34	like	like	ADP	_	37 cinders	case
35	so	so	ADV	_	36 many	advmod
36	many	many	ADJ	Degree=Pos	37 cinders	amod
37	cinders	cinder	NOUN	Number=Plur	24 grew	obl
38	.	.	PUNCT	_	6 happened	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	happen	past	a strange thing		then		vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
2	begin	past	the pearls				vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality
3	lose	to-infinitive	the pearls not said here	pearls's whiteness			vn succeed-74-3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent whiteness=Eventuality
4	grow	past	the pearls not said here			dim property	vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
5	grow	past	pearls = pearl		then	black property	vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
6	is	past	pearls = pearl		till last many cinders		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/pg641/24/33/