The Violet Fairy Book, The Headless Dwarfs, sentence 92

It would have mattered little to Hans had he known what they were saying or thinking of him.

Who acts: Hans, backs · What happens: matter, have, know, say, think · To what, where: It · Speech: someone speaks here

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 (Hans, backs), 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	It	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 mattered	nsubj:pass
2	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	4 mattered	aux
3	have	have	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	4 mattered	aux
4	mattered	matter	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	root	root
5	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	4 mattered	advmod
6	to	to	ADP	_	7 Hans	case
7	Hans	Hans	PROPN	Number=Sing	8 had	nsubj
8	had	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 mattered	advcl
9	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	10 known	nsubj
10	known	know	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	8 had	xcomp
11	what	what	PRON	PronType=Int	14 saying	obj
12	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 saying	nsubj
13	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	14 saying	aux
14	saying	say	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	10 known	obl
15	or	or	CCONJ	_	16 thinking	cc
16	thinking	think	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	14 saying	conj
17	of	of	ADP	_	18 him	case
18	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	16 thinking	obl
19	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 mattered	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	matter	would · perfect · passive		It		tree rules
2	have	past	Hans			tree rules
3	know	participle	Hans			vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer
4	say speech: assert	past · progressive	backs = back			vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent what=Topic
5	think speech: other	gerund	backs = back not said here		of Hans	vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: 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/pg641/33/92/