The Green Fairy Book, The Story of Caliph Stork, sentence 74

It’s a pity the stupid creatures were scared away by our laughter, or no doubt they would have sung next!’

Who acts: countenance, stupid creatures · What happens: be, sing · To what, where: pity, doubt

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 (countenance, stupid creatures), 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	It	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 pity	nsubj
2	’s	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	4 pity	cop
3	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	4 pity	det
4	pity	pity	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root
5	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	7 creatures	det
6	stupid	stupid	ADJ	Degree=Pos	7 creatures	amod
7	creatures	creature	NOUN	Number=Plur	9 scared	nsubj
8	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	9 scared	cop
9	scared	scared	ADJ	Degree=Pos	4 pity	acl:relcl
10	away	away	ADV	_	9 scared	advmod
11	by	by	ADP	_	13 laughter	case
12	our	our	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=1 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	13 laughter	nmod:poss
13	laughter	laughter	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 scared	obl
14	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 sung	punct
15	or	or	CCONJ	_	21 sung	cc
16	no	no	DET	PronType=Neg	17 doubt	det
17	doubt	doubt	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 sung	nsubj:pass
18	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 sung	nsubj:pass
19	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	21 sung	aux
20	have	have	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	21 sung	aux
21	sung	sing	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	4 pity	parataxis
22	next	next	ADV	_	21 sung	advmod
23	!	!	PUNCT	_	21 sung	punct
24	’	'	PUNCT	_	4 pity	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	is a	present	countenance	a pity		tree rules
2	is	past	the stupid creatures	a pity not said here	by our laughter; away, scared property	tree rules
3	sing speech: express	would · perfect · passive		no doubt	next property	vn sound_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: subject=Theme

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/pg7277/7/74/