English Fairy Tales, The History of Tom Thumb, sentence 5

He therefore asked them why they were so melancholy, and learned that they were miserable because they had no children.

Who acts: Merlin, wife · What happens: ask, be, learn, have · To what, where: wife, melancholy, children · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The History of Tom Thumb. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Merlin, wife), 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	He	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 asked	nsubj
2	therefore	therefore	ADV	_	3 asked	advmod
3	asked	ask	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 asked	obj
5	why	why	ADV	PronType=Int	9 melancholy	advmod
6	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	9 melancholy	nsubj
7	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	9 melancholy	cop
8	so	so	ADV	_	9 melancholy	advmod
9	melancholy	melancholy	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 asked	obl
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	12 learned	punct
11	and	and	CCONJ	_	12 learned	cc
12	learned	learn	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 asked	conj
13	that	that	SCONJ	_	16 miserable	mark
14	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	16 miserable	nsubj
15	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	16 miserable	cop
16	miserable	miserable	ADJ	Degree=Pos	12 learned	ccomp
17	because	because	SCONJ	_	19 had	mark
18	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	19 had	nsubj
19	had	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	12 learned	advcl
20	no	no	DET	PronType=Neg	21 children	det
21	children	child	NOUN	Number=Plur	19 had	obj
22	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 asked	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	other	roles by
1	ask speech: ask	past	Merlin		wife	therefore property	vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent they=Recipient
2	is a	past	wife	melancholy			tree rules
3	learn	past	Merlin not said here				vn learn-14-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
4	is	past	wife			miserable property	tree rules
5	have	past	wife	no children			vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=Patient

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/pg7439/28/5/