English Fairy Tales, Molly Whuppie, sentence 1

Once upon a time there was a man and a wife had too many children, and they could not get meat for them, so they took the three youngest and left them in a wood.

Who acts: man · What happens: be, have, not get, take, leave · To what, where: many children, meat, youngest, man, wood

This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Molly Whuppie. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man), 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	Once	once	ADV	NumForm=Word NumType=Mult	6 was	advmod
2	upon	upon	ADP	_	4 time	case
3	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	4 time	det
4	time	time	NOUN	Number=Sing	1 Once	obl
5	there	there	PRON	PronType=Dem	6 was	expl
6	was	be	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	12 had	advcl
7	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	8 man	det
8	man	man	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 had	nsubj
9	and	and	CCONJ	_	11 wife	cc
10	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	11 wife	det
11	wife	wife	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 man	conj
12	had	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
13	too	too	ADV	_	14 many	advmod
14	many	many	ADJ	Degree=Pos	15 children	amod
15	children	child	NOUN	Number=Plur	12 had	obj
16	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 get	punct
17	and	and	CCONJ	_	21 get	cc
18	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 get	nsubj
19	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	21 get	aux
20	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	21 get	advmod
21	get	get	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	12 had	conj
22	meat	meat	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 get	obj
23	for	for	ADP	_	24 them	case
24	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 get	obl
25	,	,	PUNCT	_	28 took	punct
26	so	so	ADV	_	28 took	advmod
27	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	28 took	nsubj
28	took	take	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	12 had	parataxis
29	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	30 three	det
30	three	three	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	31 youngest	nsubj
31	youngest	young	ADJ	Degree=Sup	28 took	obj
32	and	and	CCONJ	_	33 left	cc
33	left	leave	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	28 took	conj
34	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	33 left	obj
35	in	in	ADP	_	37 wood	case
36	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	37 wood	det
37	wood	wood	NOUN	Number=Sing	33 left	obl
38	.	.	PUNCT	_	12 had	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	be	past	a man and a wife not said here		there	once property	vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
2	have	past	a man and a wife	many children			vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=Patient
3	not get	could	man	meat		for children = child	vn get-13.5.1-1 «NP V NP PP.source»: agent=Agent meat=Theme for they=Source
4	take	past	man	youngest			vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent young=Theme
5	leave	past	man not said here	man	a wood		vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent they=Theme in wood=Location

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: «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7439 (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/pg7439/25/1/