English Fairy Tales, _to My Dear Little May_, sentence 16

One cannot imagine a child saying, “Tell us a folk-tale, nurse,” or “Another nursery tale, please, grandma.”

Who acts: One, child · What happens: not imagine, say, tell · To what, where: child, folk tale, us · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, _to My Dear Little May_. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (One, child), 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	One	one	PRON	Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 imagine	nsubj
2	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	4 imagine	aux
3	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	4 imagine	advmod
4	imagine	imagine	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
5	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	6 child	det
6	child	child	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 imagine	obj
7	saying	say	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	6 child	acl
8	,	,	PUNCT	_	10 Tell	punct
9	“	"	PUNCT	_	10 Tell	punct
10	Tell	tell	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	7 saying	ccomp
11	us	we	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	10 Tell	iobj
12	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	15 tale	det
13	folk	folk	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 tale	compound
14	-	-	PUNCT	_	13 folk	punct
15	tale	tale	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 Tell	obj
16	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 nurse	punct
17	nurse	nurse	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 tale	conj
18	,	,	PUNCT	_	10 Tell	punct
19	”	"	PUNCT	_	10 Tell	punct
20	or	or	CCONJ	_	24 tale	cc
21	“	"	PUNCT	_	24 tale	punct
22	Another	another	DET	PronType=Ind	24 tale	det
23	nursery	nursery	NOUN	Number=Sing	24 tale	compound
24	tale	tale	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 child	conj
25	,	,	PUNCT	_	26 please	punct
26	please	please	INTJ	_	4 imagine	discourse
27	,	,	PUNCT	_	28 grandma	punct
28	grandma	grandma	NOUN	Number=Sing	26 please	vocative
29	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 imagine	punct
30	”	"	PUNCT	_	4 imagine	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	roles by
1	not imagine	can	One	a child or another nursery tale		vn wish-62 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot child=Theme
2	say speech: assert	gerund	a child or another nursery tale not said here			vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
3	tell speech: assert in a quote	infinitive		a folk tale and nurse	us	vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent we=Recipient tale=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: «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.

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