The Green Fairy Book, The Magic Swan, sentence 4
The poor creature had a most trying life of it in every way, and day and night he pondered how he could make it better.
Who acts: poor creature, creature · What happens: have, try, ponder, make · To what, where: trying life, way, life
This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Magic Swan. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor creature, creature), 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 | The | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 3 creature | det |
| 2 | poor | poor | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 creature | amod |
| 3 | creature | creature | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 had | nsubj |
| 4 | had | have | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 5 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 8 life | det |
| 6 | most | most | ADV | Degree=Sup | 7 trying | advmod |
| 7 | trying | try | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 8 life | amod |
| 8 | life | life | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 had | obj |
| 9 | of | of | ADP | _ | 10 it | case |
| 10 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 8 life | nmod |
| 11 | in | in | ADP | _ | 13 way | case |
| 12 | every | every | DET | PronType=Tot | 13 way | det |
| 13 | way | way | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 had | obl |
| 14 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 20 pondered | punct |
| 15 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 20 pondered | cc |
| 16 | day | day | NOUN | Number=Sing | 20 pondered | obl:unmarked |
| 17 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 18 night | cc |
| 18 | night | night | NOUN | Number=Sing | 16 day | conj |
| 19 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 20 pondered | nsubj |
| 20 | pondered | ponder | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 had | conj |
| 21 | how | how | ADV | PronType=Int | 24 make | advmod |
| 22 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 24 make | nsubj |
| 23 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 24 make | aux |
| 24 | make | make | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 20 pondered | ccomp |
| 25 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 24 make | obj |
| 26 | better | good | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 24 make | xcomp |
| 27 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 had | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | have | past | the poor creature | a trying life of life | every way | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent life=Patient | |||
| 2 | try | gerund | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer | ||||||
| 3 | ponder | past | creature | day | tree rules | ||||
| 4 | make | could | creature | life | good property | vn build-26.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Product |
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/pg7277/23/4/