The Green Fairy Book, The Story of Caliph Stork, sentence 15

The pedlar opened the drawer and showed them a box containing a black powder, and a scroll written in strange characters, which neither the Caliph nor the Mansor could read.

Who acts: pedlar, box, Caliph · What happens: open, show, contain, write, read · To what, where: drawer, Caliph, black powder, scroll, strange characters

This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Caliph Stork. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (pedlar, box, Caliph), 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	2 pedlar	det
2	pedlar	pedlar	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 opened	nsubj
3	opened	open	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	5 drawer	det
5	drawer	drawer	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 opened	obj
6	and	and	CCONJ	_	7 showed	cc
7	showed	show	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 opened	conj
8	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	7 showed	obj
9	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	10 box	det
10	box	box	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 showed	obj
11	containing	contain	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	10 box	acl
12	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	14 powder	det
13	black	black	ADJ	Degree=Pos	14 powder	amod
14	powder	powder	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 containing	obj
15	,	,	PUNCT	_	19 written	punct
16	and	and	CCONJ	_	19 written	cc
17	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	18 scroll	det
18	scroll	scroll	NOUN	Number=Sing	19 written	nsubj:pass
19	written	write	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	7 showed	conj
20	in	in	ADP	_	22 characters	case
21	strange	strange	ADJ	Degree=Pos	22 characters	amod
22	characters	character	NOUN	Number=Plur	19 written	obl
23	,	,	PUNCT	_	32 read	punct
24	which	which	PRON	PronType=Rel	32 read	obj
25	neither	neither	CCONJ	Polarity=Neg	27 Caliph	cc:preconj
26	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	27 Caliph	det
27	Caliph	Caliph	PROPN	Number=Sing	32 read	nsubj
28	nor	nor	CCONJ	Polarity=Neg	30 Mansor	cc
29	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	30 Mansor	det
30	Mansor	Mansor	PROPN	Number=Sing	27 Caliph	conj
31	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	32 read	aux
32	read	read	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	22 characters	acl:relcl
33	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 opened	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	roles by
1	open	past	the pedlar	the drawer		vn spatial_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location drawer=Theme
2	show	past	the pedlar not said here	Caliph		vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent they=Recipient box=Topic
3	contain	gerund	a box not said here	a black powder		vn comprise-107.2-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot powder=Theme
4	write	participle · passive		a scroll	strange characters	vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: subject=Theme in character=Destination
5	read	could	the Caliph nor the Mansor	strange characters		vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent which=Topic

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/pg7277/7/15/