The Violet Fairy Book, The Headless Dwarfs, sentence 57
A few weeks later the minister was asked to attend a christening in the neighbouring town.
Who acts: minister · What happens: ask, attend, neighbour · To what, where: minister, christening, neighbouring town
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Headless Dwarfs. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (minister), 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 | A | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 3 weeks | det |
| 2 | few | few | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 weeks | amod |
| 3 | weeks | week | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 later | obl:unmarked |
| 4 | later | late | ADV | Degree=Cmp | 8 asked | advmod |
| 5 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 6 minister | det |
| 6 | minister | minister | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 asked | nsubj:pass |
| 7 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 8 asked | aux:pass |
| 8 | asked | ask | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | root | root |
| 9 | to | to | PART | _ | 10 attend | mark |
| 10 | attend | attend | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 8 asked | xcomp |
| 11 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 12 christening | det |
| 12 | christening | christening | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 attend | obj |
| 13 | in | in | ADP | _ | 16 town | case |
| 14 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 16 town | det |
| 15 | neighbouring | neighbour | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 16 town | amod |
| 16 | town | town | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 attend | obl |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 8 asked | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ask speech: ask | past · passive | the minister | late property | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S_INF»: subject=Recipient clause=Topic | ||||
| 2 | attend not said to happen | to-infinitive | the minister not said here | a christening | the neighbouring town | vn attend-107.4-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme christening=Goal | |||
| 3 | neighbour | gerund | 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/pg641/33/57/