The Violet Fairy Book, Virgilius the Sorcerer, sentence 45

He did not know how to fight the magician, but with a great effort struggled to open his Black Book, which told him what spells to use.

Who acts: Virgilius, Black Book · What happens: not know, fight, struggle, open, tell, spell · To what, where: magician, Black Book, Virgilius · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Virgilius the Sorcerer. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Virgilius, Black Book), 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	He	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 know	nsubj
2	did	do	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 know	aux
3	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	4 know	advmod
4	know	know	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
5	how	how	ADV	PronType=Int	7 fight	advmod
6	to	to	PART	_	7 fight	mark
7	fight	fight	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	4 know	ccomp
8	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	9 magician	det
9	magician	magician	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 fight	obj
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	16 struggled	punct
11	but	but	CCONJ	_	16 struggled	cc
12	with	with	ADP	_	15 effort	case
13	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	15 effort	det
14	great	great	ADJ	Degree=Pos	15 effort	amod
15	effort	effort	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 struggled	obl
16	struggled	struggle	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 know	conj
17	to	to	PART	_	18 open	mark
18	open	open	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	16 struggled	xcomp
19	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	21 Book	nmod:poss
20	Black	Black	PROPN	Number=Sing	21 Book	compound
21	Book	Book	PROPN	Number=Sing	18 open	obj
22	,	,	PUNCT	_	24 told	punct
23	which	which	PRON	PronType=Rel	24 told	nsubj
24	told	tell	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	21 Book	advcl:relcl
25	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	24 told	iobj
26	what	what	PRON	PronType=Int	27 spells	nsubj
27	spells	spell	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	24 told	ccomp
28	to	to	PART	_	29 use	mark
29	use	use	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	27 spells	xcomp
30	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 know	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	other	roles by
1	not know	past · do-support	Virgilius				vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus
2	fight	to-infinitive		the magician			vn battle-36.4-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent magician=Co-Agent
3	struggle	past	Virgilius not said here			with a great effort	tree rules
4	open	to-infinitive	Virgilius not said here	Virgilius's Black Book			vn spatial_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location book=Theme
5	tell speech: assert	past	Virgilius's Black Book		Virgilius		vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP what S»: agent=Agent he=Recipient clause=Topic
6	spell	present					tree rules
7	use	to-infinitive					vn eat-39.1 «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/pg641/43/45/