The Violet Fairy Book, The Nunda, Eater of People, sentence 184
But he answered: ‘What I have said, I cannot take back.
Who acts: cat, I · What happens: answer, say, not take back · Speech: someone speaks here
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 (cat, I), 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 | _ | 3 answered | cc |
| 2 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 3 answered | nsubj |
| 3 | answered | answer | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 9 said | punct |
| 5 | ‘ | ' | PUNCT | _ | 9 said | punct |
| 6 | What | what | PRON | PronType=Int | 9 said | obj |
| 7 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 9 said | nsubj |
| 8 | have | have | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 9 said | aux |
| 9 | said | say | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | 14 take | advcl |
| 10 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 9 said | punct |
| 11 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 14 take | nsubj |
| 12 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 14 take | aux |
| 13 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 14 take | advmod |
| 14 | take | take | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 3 answered | ccomp |
| 15 | back | back | ADV | _ | 14 take | advmod |
| 16 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 answered | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | answer speech: assert | past | cat | tree rules | |||||
| 2 | say speech: assert | present · perfect | I | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent what=Topic | |||||
| 3 | not take back | can | I | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
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/pg641/29/184/