The Violet Fairy Book, The Girl Who Pretended to Be a Boy, part 3, sentence 19

They say you are a just man; then why not entrust this quest to one of them?

Who acts: spurs, you · What happens: say, be, not entrust · To what, where: man, quest, one · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Girl Who Pretended to Be a Boy, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (spurs, you), 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	They	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 say	nsubj
2	say	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	7 man	nsubj
4	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	7 man	cop
5	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	7 man	det
6	just	just	ADV	_	7 man	advmod
7	man	man	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 say	ccomp
8	;	;	PUNCT	_	12 entrust	punct
9	then	then	ADV	PronType=Dem	12 entrust	advmod
10	why	why	ADV	PronType=Int	12 entrust	advmod
11	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	12 entrust	advmod
12	entrust	entrust	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 say	conj
13	this	this	DET	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	14 quest	det
14	quest	quest	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 entrust	obj
15	to	to	ADP	_	16 one	case
16	one	one	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	12 entrust	obl
17	of	of	ADP	_	18 them	case
18	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	16 one	nmod
19	?	?	PUNCT	_	2 say	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	when	roles by
1	say speech: assert	present	spurs = spur				vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent
2	is a	present	you	a man			tree rules
3	not entrust	infinitive	spurs = spur not said here	this quest	one of spurs	then	vn fulfilling-13.4.1-1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent quest=Theme to one=Recipient

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/pg641/40/19/