The Green Fairy Book, The Enchanted Watch, sentence 137
In vain did Prince Mirliflor’s father write commanding him to return, and proposing for him one good match after another.
Who acts: father · What happens: write, command, return, propose · To what, where: one good match, vain, father · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Watch. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (father), 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 | In | in | ADP | _ | 2 vain | case |
| 2 | vain | vain | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 8 write | obl |
| 3 | did | do | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 8 write | aux |
| 4 | Prince | Prince | PROPN | Number=Sing | 5 Mirliflor | nmod:desc |
| 5 | Mirliflor | Mirliflor | PROPN | Number=Sing | 7 father | nmod:poss |
| 6 | ’s | 's | PART | _ | 5 Mirliflor | case |
| 7 | father | father | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 write | nsubj |
| 8 | write | write | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 9 | commanding | command | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 8 write | xcomp |
| 10 | him | he | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 9 commanding | obj |
| 11 | to | to | PART | _ | 12 return | mark |
| 12 | return | return | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 9 commanding | advcl |
| 13 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 20 match | punct |
| 14 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 20 match | cc |
| 15 | proposing | propose | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 20 match | csubj |
| 16 | for | for | ADP | _ | 17 him | case |
| 17 | him | he | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 15 proposing | obl |
| 18 | one | one | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 20 match | nummod |
| 19 | good | good | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 20 match | amod |
| 20 | match | match | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 write | obl |
| 21 | after | after | ADP | _ | 22 another | case |
| 22 | another | another | DET | PronType=Ind | 20 match | nmod |
| 23 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 8 write | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | write | past · do-support | Mirliflor Prince's father | one good match after another | vain | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||
| 2 | command | gerund | Mirliflor Prince's father not said here | father | vn supervision-95.2.2-1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent he=Theme | ||||
| 3 | return | to-infinitive | Mirliflor Prince's father not said here | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||||
| 4 | propose | gerund | for Prince | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
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/pg7277/8/137/