The Violet Fairy Book, The Grateful Prince, part 1, sentence 31
To become king at the cost of a maiden’s life was too heavy a price to pay.
Who acts: life · What happens: become, be, pay · To what, where: king, cost
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Prince, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (life), 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 | To | to | PART | _ | 2 become | mark |
| 2 | become | become | VERB | Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | king | king | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 become | xcomp |
| 4 | at | at | ADP | _ | 6 cost | case |
| 5 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 6 cost | det |
| 6 | cost | cost | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 become | obl |
| 7 | of | of | SCONJ | _ | 14 heavy | mark |
| 8 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 9 maiden | det |
| 9 | maiden | maiden | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 life | nmod:poss |
| 10 | ’s | 's | PART | _ | 9 maiden | case |
| 11 | life | life | NOUN | Number=Sing | 14 heavy | nsubj |
| 12 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 14 heavy | cop |
| 13 | too | too | ADV | _ | 14 heavy | advmod |
| 14 | heavy | heavy | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 16 price | amod |
| 15 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 16 price | det |
| 16 | price | price | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 cost | nmod |
| 17 | to | to | PART | _ | 18 pay | mark |
| 18 | pay | pay | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 16 price | acl |
| 19 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 become | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | become | to-infinitive | king | the cost a heavy price | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient | ||||
| 2 | is | past | a maiden's life | heavy property | tree rules | ||||
| 3 | pay | to-infinitive | vn pay-68-1 «NP V NP»: 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/pg641/9/31/