Celtic Fairy Tales, The Battle of the Birds, sentence 218

There was no help for it, but to turn the chase for them; and he was the boy to split the stones.

Who acts: help · What happens: be, turn, split · To what, where: chase, boy, stones

This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Battle of the Birds. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (help), 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	There	there	PRON	PronType=Dem	2 was	expl
2	was	be	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	no	no	DET	PronType=Neg	4 help	det
4	help	help	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 was	nsubj
5	for	for	ADP	_	6 it	case
6	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 help	nmod
7	,	,	PUNCT	_	10 turn	punct
8	but	but	CCONJ	_	10 turn	cc
9	to	to	PART	_	10 turn	mark
10	turn	turn	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 was	conj
11	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	12 chase	det
12	chase	chase	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 turn	obj
13	for	for	ADP	_	14 them	case
14	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	10 turn	obl
15	;	;	PUNCT	_	20 boy	punct
16	and	and	CCONJ	_	20 boy	cc
17	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	20 boy	nsubj
18	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	20 boy	cop
19	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	20 boy	det
20	boy	boy	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 was	nsubj
21	to	to	PART	_	22 split	mark
22	split	split	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	20 boy	acl
23	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	24 stones	det
24	stones	stone	NOUN	Number=Plur	22 split	obj
25	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 was	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	be	past	no help for rock		there		vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
2	turn	to-infinitive	no help for rock not said here	the chase		for miles = mile	vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent chase=Theme
3	is a	past	help	the boy			tree rules
4	split	to-infinitive	no help for rock not said here	the stones			vn break-45.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent stone=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: «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/pg7885/31/218/