The Violet Fairy Book, The Underground Workers, sentence 31

From time to time he would give his workmen a sign with his staff, for it was useless to speak amid such a noise.

Who acts: man, it · What happens: give, be, speak · To what, where: workmen, amid · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Underground Workers. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man, it), 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	From	from	ADP	_	2 time	case
2	time	time	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 give	obl
3	to	to	ADP	_	4 time	case
4	time	time	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 time	nmod
5	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	7 give	nsubj
6	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	7 give	aux
7	give	give	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
8	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	9 workmen	nmod:poss
9	workmen	workman	NOUN	Number=Plur	7 give	obj
10	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	11 sign	det
11	sign	sign	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 give	obj
12	with	with	ADP	_	14 staff	case
13	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	14 staff	nmod:poss
14	staff	staff	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 sign	nmod
15	,	,	PUNCT	_	19 useless	punct
16	for	for	ADP	_	19 useless	case
17	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	19 useless	nsubj
18	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	19 useless	cop
19	useless	useless	ADJ	Degree=Pos	7 give	conj
20	to	to	PART	_	21 speak	mark
21	speak	speak	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	19 useless	xcomp
22	amid	amid	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 speak	obj
23	such	such	DET	PronType=Ind	25 noise	det:predet
24	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	25 noise	det
25	noise	noise	NOUN	Number=Sing	22 amid	conj
26	.	.	PUNCT	_	7 give	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	give	would	man	man's workmen	time		vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent workman=Recipient sign=Theme
2	is	past	it			useless property	tree rules
3	speak speech: other	to-infinitive		amid and such noise			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/pg641/25/31/