Tanglewood Tales, The Dragon's Teeth., part 4, sentence 71

The five soldiers grumbled a little, and muttered that it was their business to overthrow cities, not to build them up.

Who acts: five soldiers, city · What happens: grumble, mutter, be, overthrow, not build up · To what, where: little, business, cities, fellows

This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Dragon's Teeth., part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (five soldiers, city), 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	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	3 soldiers	det
2	five	five	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	3 soldiers	nummod
3	soldiers	soldier	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 grumbled	nsubj
4	grumbled	grumble	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
5	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	6 little	det
6	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	4 grumbled	obl:unmarked
7	,	,	PUNCT	_	9 muttered	punct
8	and	and	CCONJ	_	9 muttered	cc
9	muttered	mutter	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 grumbled	conj
10	that	that	SCONJ	_	14 business	mark
11	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 business	nsubj
12	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	14 business	cop
13	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	14 business	nmod:poss
14	business	business	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 muttered	advcl
15	to	to	PART	_	16 overthrow	mark
16	overthrow	overthrow	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	9 muttered	advcl
17	cities	city	NOUN	Number=Plur	16 overthrow	obj
18	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 build	punct
19	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	21 build	advmod
20	to	to	PART	_	21 build	mark
21	build	build	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	16 overthrow	conj
22	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 build	obj
23	up	up	ADP	_	21 build	compound:prt
24	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 grumbled	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	grumble speech: other	past	the five soldiers	a little	vn complain-37.8 «NP V»: agent=Agent
2	mutter speech: assert	past	the five soldiers not said here		vn manner_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent
3	is a	past	city	fellows's business	tree rules
4	overthrow	to-infinitive	the five soldiers not said here	cities	tree rules
5	not build up	to-infinitive	the five soldiers not said here	fellows = fellow	vn caused_calibratable_cos-45.6.2-1 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Causer they=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: «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Project Gutenberg book 976 (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/pg976/13/71/