The Green Fairy Book, The Snuff-box, sentence 1

As often happens in this world, there was once a young man who spent all his time in travelling.

Who acts: young man · What happens: happen, be, spend · To what, where: world, travelling

This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Snuff-box. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (young man), 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	As	as	SCONJ	_	3 happens	mark
2	often	often	ADV	_	3 happens	advmod
3	happens	happen	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	9 was	advcl
4	in	in	ADP	_	6 world	case
5	this	this	DET	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	6 world	det
6	world	world	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 happens	obl
7	,	,	PUNCT	_	3 happens	punct
8	there	there	PRON	PronType=Dem	9 was	expl
9	was	be	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
10	once	once	ADV	NumForm=Word NumType=Mult	9 was	advmod
11	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	13 man	det
12	young	young	ADJ	Degree=Pos	13 man	amod
13	man	man	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 once	nsubj
14	who	who	PRON	PronType=Rel	15 spent	nsubj
15	spent	spend	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	13 man	acl:relcl
16	all	all	DET	PronType=Tot	18 time	det:predet
17	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	18 time	nmod:poss
18	time	time	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 spent	obj
19	in	in	ADP	_	20 travelling	case
20	travelling	travelling	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 spent	obl
21	.	.	PUNCT	_	9 was	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	where	when	other	roles by
1	happen	present		this world		often property	vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme in world=Location
2	be	past		there		once property	vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
3	spend	past	a young man	travelling	time		vn consume-66-1 «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 Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (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/pg7277/20/1/