The Happy Prince, and Other Tales, Opening, part 7, sentence 10
May I ask were you born like that, or is it the result of an accident?”
Who acts: I, shape · What happens: ask, be, bear · To what, where: you, result
This is a sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 7. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, shape), 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 | May | may | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 3 ask | aux |
| 2 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 3 ask | nsubj |
| 3 | ask | ask | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 4 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 you | cop |
| 5 | you | you | PRON | Case=Acc Person=2 PronType=Prs | 3 ask | obl |
| 6 | born | bear | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 3 ask | xcomp |
| 7 | like | like | ADP | _ | 8 that | case |
| 8 | that | that | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 6 born | obl |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 14 result | punct |
| 10 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 14 result | cc |
| 11 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 14 result | cop |
| 12 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 14 result | nsubj |
| 13 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 14 result | det |
| 14 | result | result | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 ask | parataxis |
| 15 | of | of | ADP | _ | 17 accident | case |
| 16 | an | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 17 accident | det |
| 17 | accident | accident | NOUN | Number=Sing | 14 result | nmod |
| 18 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 3 ask | punct |
| 19 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 3 ask | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ask speech: ask | may | I | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 2 | is a | past | you | tree rules | |||||
| 3 | bear not said to happen | participle | I not said here | like that | vn admire-31.2 «NP V that S»: agent=Experiencer | ||||
| 4 | is a | present | shape | the result | of a accident | tree rules |
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/pg902/7/10/