The Violet Fairy Book, The History of Dwarf Long Nose, part 1, sentence 36

‘Your neck is as thin as a cabbage-stalk, and it might easily break and your head fall into the basket, and then who would buy anything?’

Who acts: neck, head · What happens: be, break, fall, buy · To what, where: basket, anything

This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The History of Dwarf Long Nose, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (neck, head), 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	‘	'	PUNCT	_	6 thin	punct
2	Your	your	PRON	Case=Gen Person=2 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	3 neck	nmod:poss
3	neck	neck	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 thin	nsubj
4	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	6 thin	cop
5	as	as	ADV	_	6 thin	advmod
6	thin	thin	ADJ	Degree=Pos	root	root
7	as	as	ADP	_	11 stalk	case
8	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	11 stalk	det
9	cabbage	cabbage	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 stalk	compound
10	-	-	PUNCT	_	9 cabbage	punct
11	stalk	stalk	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 thin	obl
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 break	punct
13	and	and	CCONJ	_	17 break	cc
14	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	17 break	nsubj
15	might	might	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	17 break	aux
16	easily	easily	ADV	_	17 break	advmod
17	break	break	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	6 thin	parataxis
18	and	and	CCONJ	_	21 fall	cc
19	your	your	PRON	Case=Gen Person=2 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	20 head	nmod:poss
20	head	head	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 fall	nsubj
21	fall	fall	VERB	Mood=Ind Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	17 break	conj
22	into	into	ADP	_	24 basket	case
23	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	24 basket	det
24	basket	basket	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 fall	obl
25	,	,	PUNCT	_	30 buy	punct
26	and	and	CCONJ	_	30 buy	cc
27	then	then	ADV	PronType=Dem	30 buy	advmod
28	who	who	PRON	PronType=Rel	30 buy	nsubj
29	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	30 buy	aux
30	buy	buy	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	17 break	conj
31	anything	anything	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Ind	30 buy	obj
32	?	?	PUNCT	_	6 thin	punct
33	’	'	PUNCT	_	6 thin	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	is	present	Your neck			as a cabbage stalk; thin property	tree rules
2	break	might	neck			easily property	vn hurt-40.8.3-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Patient
3	fall	present	your head			into the basket result	vn become-109.1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient into basket=Result
4	buy	would		anything	then		vn accept-77.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent anything=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/pg641/26/36/