The Violet Fairy Book, The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples, sentence 74

Again the empress was sitting alone, and once more they began to think of a scheme by which they could escape the dragon’s power.

Who acts: empress, threats · What happens: sit, begin, think, escape · To what, where: power

This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (empress, threats), 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	Again	again	ADV	_	3 empress	advmod
2	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	3 empress	det
3	empress	empress	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 sitting	nsubj
4	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 sitting	aux
5	sitting	sit	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	root	root
6	alone	alone	ADV	_	5 sitting	advmod
7	,	,	PUNCT	_	12 began	punct
8	and	and	CCONJ	_	12 began	cc
9	once	once	ADV	NumForm=Word NumType=Mult	10 more	advmod
10	more	more	ADV	Degree=Cmp	12 began	advmod
11	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	12 began	nsubj
12	began	begin	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 sitting	conj
13	to	to	PART	_	14 think	mark
14	think	think	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	12 began	xcomp
15	of	of	ADP	_	17 scheme	case
16	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	17 scheme	det
17	scheme	scheme	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 think	obl
18	by	by	ADP	_	19 which	case
19	which	which	PRON	PronType=Rel	22 escape	obl
20	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	22 escape	nsubj
21	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	22 escape	aux
22	escape	escape	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	17 scheme	acl:relcl
23	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	24 dragon	det
24	dragon	dragon	NOUN	Number=Sing	26 power	nmod:poss
25	’s	's	PART	_	24 dragon	case
26	power	power	NOUN	Number=Sing	22 escape	obj
27	.	.	PUNCT	_	5 sitting	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	sit	past · progressive	the empress		alone property	vn assuming_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent
2	begin	past	threats = threat			vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality
3	think speech: other	to-infinitive	threats = threat not said here		of a scheme	vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
4	escape	could	threats = threat	the dragon's power	by a scheme	vn escape-51.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme power=Initial_Location

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/pg641/7/74/