The Green Fairy Book, The Biter Bit, part 5, sentence 21

‘Still,’ answered the toad, ‘you may as well tell me your difficulty, for who knows but I mayn’t be able to help you this time also.’

Who acts: you, I · What happens: answer, tell, know, not be, help · To what, where: toad, difficulty, me, you · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Biter Bit, part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, I), 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	‘	'	PUNCT	_	5 answered	punct
2	Still	still	ADV	_	5 answered	advmod
3	,	,	PUNCT	_	2 Still	punct
4	’	'	PUNCT	_	5 answered	punct
5	answered	answer	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
6	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	7 toad	det
7	toad	toad	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 answered	obj
8	,	,	PUNCT	_	14 tell	punct
9	‘	'	PUNCT	_	14 tell	punct
10	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	14 tell	nsubj
11	may	may	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	14 tell	aux
12	as	as	ADV	ExtPos=CCONJ	14 tell	cc
13	well	well	ADV	Degree=Pos	12 as	fixed
14	tell	tell	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	5 answered	conj
15	me	I	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	14 tell	iobj
16	your	your	PRON	Case=Gen Person=2 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	17 difficulty	nmod:poss
17	difficulty	difficulty	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 tell	obj
18	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 knows	punct
19	for	for	SCONJ	_	21 knows	mark
20	who	who	PRON	PronType=Rel	21 knows	nsubj
21	knows	know	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	14 tell	conj
22	but	but	CCONJ	_	27 able	cc
23	I	I	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	27 able	nsubj
24	may	may	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	27 able	aux
25	n’t	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	27 able	advmod
26	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	27 able	cop
27	able	able	ADJ	Degree=Pos	21 knows	conj
28	to	to	PART	_	29 help	mark
29	help	help	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	27 able	xcomp
30	you	you	PRON	Case=Acc Person=2 PronType=Prs	29 help	obj
31	this	this	DET	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	32 time	det
32	time	time	NOUN	Number=Sing	29 help	obl:unmarked
33	also	also	ADV	_	29 help	advmod
34	.	.	PUNCT	_	5 answered	punct
35	’	'	PUNCT	_	5 answered	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	when	other	roles by
1	answer speech: assert	past			the toad	still		vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent toad=Eventuality
2	tell speech: assert	may	you	your difficulty	me			vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent i=Recipient difficulty=Topic
3	know	present						vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer
4	not is	may	I				able property	tree rules
5	help	to-infinitive	I not said here		you	time		vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent you=Beneficiary

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.

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