The Green Fairy Book, The Story of the Fisherman and His Wife, sentence 190

‘Alas! wife,’ said the fisherman, falling on his knees before her, ‘the flounder cannot do that.

Who acts: wife, flounder · What happens: say, fall, not do · To what, where: fisherman, knees, that · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of the Fisherman and His Wife. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wife, flounder), 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	_	4 wife	punct
2	Alas	alas	INTJ	_	4 wife	discourse
3	!	!	PUNCT	_	2 Alas	punct
4	wife	wife	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 said	nsubj
5	,	,	PUNCT	_	4 wife	punct
6	’	'	PUNCT	_	4 wife	punct
7	said	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
8	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	9 fisherman	det
9	fisherman	fisherman	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 said	obj
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	11 falling	punct
11	falling	fall	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	7 said	advcl
12	on	on	ADP	_	14 knees	case
13	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	14 knees	nmod:poss
14	knees	knee	NOUN	Number=Plur	11 falling	obl
15	before	before	ADP	_	16 her	case
16	her	she	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	11 falling	obl
17	,	,	PUNCT	_	23 do	punct
18	‘	'	PUNCT	_	23 do	punct
19	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	20 flounder	det
20	flounder	flounder	NOUN	Number=Sing	23 do	nsubj
21	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	23 do	aux
22	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	23 do	advmod
23	do	do	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	7 said	conj
24	that	that	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	23 do	obj
25	.	.	PUNCT	_	7 said	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	when	roles by
1	say speech: assert	past	wife	the fisherman			vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent fisherman=Topic
2	fall	gerund	wife not said here		man's knees	before wife	vn occur-48.3 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme on knee=Location
3	not do	can	the flounder	that			vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent that=Eventuality

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/pg7277/54/190/