Celtic Fairy Tales, Jack and His Comrades, sentence 2
A very scarce summer came, and they didn't know how they'd live till the new potatoes would be fit for eating.
Who acts: scarce summer, they, new potatoes · What happens: come, not know, live, be, eat · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Jack and His Comrades. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (scarce summer, they, new potatoes), 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 | A | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 4 summer | det |
| 2 | very | very | ADV | _ | 3 scarce | advmod |
| 3 | scarce | scarce | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 4 summer | amod |
| 4 | summer | summer | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 came | nsubj |
| 5 | came | come | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 6 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 11 know | punct |
| 7 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 11 know | cc |
| 8 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 11 know | nsubj |
| 9 | did | do | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 11 know | aux |
| 10 | n't | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 11 know | advmod |
| 11 | know | know | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 5 came | conj |
| 12 | how | how | ADV | PronType=Int | 15 live | advmod |
| 13 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 15 live | nsubj |
| 14 | 'd | would | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 15 live | aux |
| 15 | live | live | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 11 know | ccomp |
| 16 | till | till | SCONJ | _ | 22 fit | mark |
| 17 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 19 potatoes | det |
| 18 | new | new | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 19 potatoes | amod |
| 19 | potatoes | potato | NOUN | Number=Plur | 22 fit | nsubj |
| 20 | would | would | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 22 fit | aux |
| 21 | be | be | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 22 fit | cop |
| 22 | fit | fit | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 15 live | advcl |
| 23 | for | for | SCONJ | _ | 24 eating | mark |
| 24 | eating | eat | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 22 fit | advcl |
| 25 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 came | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | come | past | a scarce summer | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||||
| 2 | not know | past · do-support | they | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus | |||||
| 3 | live | would | they | vn exist-47.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||||
| 4 | is | would | the new potatoes | fit property | tree rules | ||||
| 5 | eat | gerund | the new potatoes not said here | vn eat-39.1-1 «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: «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7885 (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/pg7885/18/2/