The Green Fairy Book, The Golden Blackbird, sentence 18
They even owed something to their landlord, who kept them as hostages till they could pay their debts.
Who acts: merrymakers, landlord · What happens: owe, keep, pay · To what, where: something, landlord, merrymakers, debts
This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Blackbird. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (merrymakers, landlord), 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 | They | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 3 owed | nsubj |
| 2 | even | even | ADV | _ | 3 owed | advmod |
| 3 | owed | owe | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | something | something | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Ind | 3 owed | obj |
| 5 | to | to | ADP | _ | 7 landlord | case |
| 6 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 7 landlord | nmod:poss |
| 7 | landlord | landlord | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 owed | obl |
| 8 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 10 kept | punct |
| 9 | who | who | PRON | PronType=Rel | 10 kept | nsubj |
| 10 | kept | keep | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 7 landlord | acl:relcl |
| 11 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 10 kept | obj |
| 12 | as | as | ADP | _ | 13 hostages | case |
| 13 | hostages | hostage | NOUN | Number=Plur | 10 kept | obl |
| 14 | till | till | SCONJ | _ | 17 pay | mark |
| 15 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 17 pay | nsubj |
| 16 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 17 pay | aux |
| 17 | pay | pay | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 10 kept | advcl |
| 18 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 19 debts | nmod:poss |
| 19 | debts | debt | NOUN | Number=Plur | 17 pay | obj |
| 20 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 owed | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | owe | past | merrymakers = merrymaker | something | to merrymakers's landlord goal | vn future_having-13.3 «NP V NP PP.goal»: agent=Agent something=Theme to landlord=Goal | |||
| 2 | keep | past | merrymakers's landlord | merrymakers = merrymaker | as hostages | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme | |||
| 3 | pay | could | merrymakers = merrymaker | merrymakers's debts | vn pay-68-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent debt=Asset |
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/pg7277/21/18/