The Green Fairy Book, ‘somebody Has Been At My Porridge!’, sentence 3

They were wooden spoons; if they had been silver ones, the naughty old woman would have put them in her pocket.

Who acts: They, silver ones · What happens: be, put · To what, where: wooden spoons, silver ones, naughty old woman, pocket

This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, ‘somebody Has Been At My Porridge!’. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (They, silver ones), 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	4 spoons	nsubj
2	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 spoons	cop
3	wooden	wooden	ADJ	Degree=Pos	4 spoons	amod
4	spoons	spoon	NOUN	Number=Plur	root	root
5	;	;	PUNCT	_	11 ones	punct
6	if	if	SCONJ	_	11 ones	mark
7	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	11 ones	nsubj
8	had	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	11 ones	aux
9	been	be	AUX	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	11 ones	cop
10	silver	silver	ADJ	Degree=Pos	11 ones	amod
11	ones	one	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 spoons	conj
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	19 put	punct
13	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	16 woman	det
14	naughty	naughty	ADJ	Degree=Pos	16 woman	amod
15	old	old	ADJ	Degree=Pos	16 woman	amod
16	woman	woman	NOUN	Number=Sing	19 put	nsubj:pass
17	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	19 put	aux
18	have	have	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	19 put	aux
19	put	put	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	11 ones	acl
20	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	19 put	obj
21	in	in	ADP	_	23 pocket	case
22	her	her	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	23 pocket	nmod:poss
23	pocket	pocket	NOUN	Number=Sing	19 put	obl
24	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 spoons	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	roles by
1	is a	past	They	wooden spoons and silver ones		tree rules
2	is a a condition, not said to happen	past · perfect	they	silver ones		tree rules
3	put	would · perfect · passive	silver ones not said here	the naughty old woman	woman's pocket	vn invest-13.5.4-1 «NP V NP PP.goal»: subject=Asset they=Goal

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/pg7277/33/3/