The Violet Fairy Book, The Nunda, Eater of People, sentence 165
If it saw a cow going to feed, it devoured him.
Who acts: water, cow · What happens: see, go, feed, devour · To what, where: cow, cat
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nunda, Eater of People. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (water, cow), 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 | If | if | SCONJ | _ | 3 saw | mark |
| 2 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 3 saw | nsubj |
| 3 | saw | see | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 11 devoured | advcl |
| 4 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 5 cow | det |
| 5 | cow | cow | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 saw | obj |
| 6 | going | go | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 5 cow | acl |
| 7 | to | to | PART | _ | 8 feed | mark |
| 8 | feed | feed | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 6 going | xcomp |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 3 saw | punct |
| 10 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 11 devoured | nsubj |
| 11 | devoured | devour | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 12 | him | he | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 11 devoured | obj |
| 13 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 11 devoured | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | see a condition, not said to happen | past | water | a cow | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer cow=Stimulus | ||||
| 2 | go | gerund | a cow not said here | vn say-37.7 «NP V S-Quote»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 3 | feed | to-infinitive | a cow not said here | vn gorge-39.6 «NP V PP.patient»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 4 | devour | past | water | cat | vn devour-39.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Patient |
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/pg641/29/165/