The Violet Fairy Book, The Three Princes and Their Beasts (lithuanian Fairy Tale), sentence 35
If I were to fasten your thumbs behind your back with a stout silk cord, could you wrench yourself free?”
Who acts: I, you · What happens: fasten, wrench · To what, where: thumbs, back, yourself
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Princes and Their Beasts (lithuanian Fairy Tale). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, 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 | If | if | SCONJ | _ | 5 fasten | mark |
| 2 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 5 fasten | nsubj |
| 3 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 fasten | aux |
| 4 | to | to | PART | _ | 5 fasten | mark |
| 5 | fasten | fasten | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 19 wrench | advcl |
| 6 | your | your | PRON | Case=Gen Person=2 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 7 thumbs | nmod:poss |
| 7 | thumbs | thumb | NOUN | Number=Plur | 5 fasten | obj |
| 8 | behind | behind | ADP | _ | 10 back | case |
| 9 | your | your | PRON | Case=Gen Person=2 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 10 back | nmod:poss |
| 10 | back | back | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 fasten | obl |
| 11 | with | with | ADP | _ | 15 cord | case |
| 12 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 15 cord | det |
| 13 | stout | stout | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 15 cord | amod |
| 14 | silk | silk | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 cord | compound |
| 15 | cord | cord | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 fasten | obl |
| 16 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 19 wrench | punct |
| 17 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 19 wrench | aux |
| 18 | you | you | PRON | Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs | 19 wrench | nsubj |
| 19 | wrench | wrench | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 20 | yourself | yourself | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=2 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes | 19 wrench | obj |
| 21 | free | free | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 19 wrench | xcomp |
| 22 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 19 wrench | punct |
| 23 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 19 wrench | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | fasten a condition, not said to happen | past | I | your thumbs | your back | with a stout silk cord | vn shake-22.3-2-1 «NP V NP PP»: agent=Agent thumb=Patient with cord=Co-Patient | ||
| 2 | wrench | could | you | yourself | free property | vn hurt-40.8.3-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer yourself=Patient |
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/pg641/5/35/