The Violet Fairy Book, The Boys With the Golden Stars, sentence 130
‘There was once an emperor,’ began they, and the third cushion fell down.
Who acts: emperor, third cushion · What happens: be, begin, fall down · To what, where: emperor, empresses
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Boys With the Golden Stars. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (emperor, third cushion), 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 | _ | 3 was | punct |
| 2 | There | there | PRON | PronType=Dem | 3 was | expl |
| 3 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 emperor | cop |
| 4 | once | once | ADV | NumForm=Word NumType=Mult | 3 was | advmod |
| 5 | an | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 emperor | det |
| 6 | emperor | emperor | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 began | nsubj |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 6 emperor | punct |
| 8 | ’ | ' | PUNCT | _ | 6 emperor | punct |
| 9 | began | begin | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 10 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 9 began | obj |
| 11 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 16 fell | punct |
| 12 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 16 fell | cc |
| 13 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 15 cushion | det |
| 14 | third | third | ADJ | Degree=Pos NumForm=Word NumType=Ord | 15 cushion | amod |
| 15 | cushion | cushion | NOUN | Number=Sing | 16 fell | nsubj |
| 16 | fell | fall | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 9 began | parataxis |
| 17 | down | down | ADV | _ | 16 fell | advmod |
| 18 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 9 began | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a | past | a emperor | tree rules | |||||
| 2 | begin | past | a emperor | empresses = empress | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Eventuality | ||||
| 3 | fall down | past | the third cushion | down property | vn occur-48.3 «NP V»: agent=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/pg641/35/130/