English Fairy Tales, Fairy Ointment, sentence 12
But she couldn't help wondering what it was for, as she had never seen such a thing done before.
Who acts: Dame · What happens: not help, wonder, not see, do · To what, where: thing
This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Fairy Ointment. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Dame), 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 | But | but | CCONJ | _ | 5 help | cc |
| 2 | she | she | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 5 help | nsubj |
| 3 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 5 help | aux |
| 4 | n't | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 5 help | advmod |
| 5 | help | help | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 6 | wondering | wonder | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 5 help | xcomp |
| 7 | what | what | PRON | PronType=Rel | 6 wondering | obl |
| 8 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 10 for | nsubj |
| 9 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 10 for | cop |
| 10 | for | for | ADP | _ | 7 what | case |
| 11 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 16 seen | punct |
| 12 | as | as | SCONJ | _ | 16 seen | mark |
| 13 | she | she | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 16 seen | nsubj |
| 14 | had | have | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 16 seen | aux |
| 15 | never | never | ADV | PronType=Neg | 16 seen | advmod |
| 16 | seen | see | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | 5 help | advcl |
| 17 | such | such | DET | PronType=Ind | 19 thing | det:predet |
| 18 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 19 thing | det |
| 19 | thing | thing | NOUN | Number=Sing | 16 seen | obj |
| 20 | done | do | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | 16 seen | conj |
| 21 | before | before | ADV | _ | 20 done | advmod |
| 22 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 help | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not help | could | Dame | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Theme | |||||
| 2 | wonder speech: ask not said to happen | gerund | Dame not said here | vn care-88.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer | |||||
| 3 | not see | past · perfect | Dame | such thing | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer thing=Stimulus | ||||
| 4 | do | participle | Dame not said here | before property | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: 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: «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/pg7439/46/12/