The Happy Prince, and Other Tales, Opening, part 5, sentence 8

Anybody can say charming things and try to please and to flatter, but a true friend always says unpleasant things, and does not mind giving pain.

Who acts: Anybody, true friend · What happens: say, try, please, flatter, not mind, give · To what, where: charming things, unpleasant things, pain · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Anybody, true friend), 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	Anybody	anybody	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Ind	3 say	nsubj
2	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	3 say	aux
3	say	say	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
4	charming	charming	ADJ	Degree=Pos	5 things	amod
5	things	thing	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 say	obj
6	and	and	CCONJ	_	7 try	cc
7	try	try	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	3 say	conj
8	to	to	PART	_	9 please	mark
9	please	please	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	7 try	xcomp
10	and	and	CCONJ	_	12 flatter	cc
11	to	to	PART	_	12 flatter	mark
12	flatter	flatter	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	9 please	conj
13	,	,	PUNCT	_	19 says	punct
14	but	but	CCONJ	_	19 says	cc
15	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	17 friend	det
16	true	true	ADJ	Degree=Pos	17 friend	amod
17	friend	friend	NOUN	Number=Sing	19 says	nsubj
18	always	always	ADV	PronType=Tot	19 says	advmod
19	says	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	3 say	parataxis
20	unpleasant	unpleasant	ADJ	Degree=Pos	21 things	amod
21	things	thing	NOUN	Number=Plur	19 says	obj
22	,	,	PUNCT	_	26 mind	punct
23	and	and	CCONJ	_	26 mind	cc
24	does	do	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	26 mind	aux
25	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	26 mind	advmod
26	mind	mind	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	19 says	ccomp
27	giving	give	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	26 mind	xcomp
28	pain	pain	NOUN	Number=Sing	27 giving	obj
29	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 say	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	say speech: assert	can	Anybody	charming things		vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent thing=Topic
2	try	infinitive	Anybody not said here			vn try-61.1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality
3	please not said to happen	to-infinitive	Anybody not said here			vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer
4	flatter	to-infinitive	Anybody not said here			vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer
5	say speech: assert	present	a true friend	unpleasant things	always property	tree rules
6	not mind	present · do-support				vn care-88.1 «NP V that S»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus
7	give	gerund		pain		vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent pain=Theme

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: «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Project Gutenberg book 902 (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/pg902/5/8/