Tanglewood Tales, The Pomegranate Seeds., part 2, sentence 66

It took them such a tedious while to tell the nothing that they knew, that it was dark night before Mother Ceres found out that she must seek her daughter elsewhere.

Who acts: It, vervain, fisherman, Mother · What happens: take, tell, know, be, find out, seek · To what, where: vervain, nothing, dark night, daughter · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pomegranate Seeds., part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (It, vervain, fisherman, Mother), 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	It	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 took	nsubj
2	took	take	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 took	obj
4	such	such	DET	PronType=Ind	7 while	det:predet
5	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	7 while	det
6	tedious	tedious	ADJ	Degree=Pos	7 while	amod
7	while	while	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 took	obl:unmarked
8	to	to	PART	_	9 tell	mark
9	tell	tell	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 took	advcl
10	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	11 nothing	det
11	nothing	nothing	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Neg	9 tell	obj
12	that	that	SCONJ	_	14 knew	mark
13	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 knew	nsubj
14	knew	know	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	11 nothing	acl
15	,	,	PUNCT	_	20 night	punct
16	that	that	SCONJ	_	20 night	mark
17	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	20 night	nsubj
18	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	20 night	cop
19	dark	dark	ADJ	Degree=Pos	20 night	amod
20	night	night	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 tell	obl
21	before	before	SCONJ	_	24 found	mark
22	Mother	Mother	PROPN	Number=Sing	24 found	nsubj
23	Ceres	Ceres	PROPN	Number=Sing	22 Mother	flat
24	found	find	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	9 tell	advcl
25	out	out	ADP	_	24 found	compound:prt
26	that	that	SCONJ	_	29 seek	mark
27	she	she	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	29 seek	nsubj
28	must	must	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	29 seek	aux
29	seek	seek	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	24 found	advcl
30	her	her	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	31 daughter	nmod:poss
31	daughter	daughter	NOUN	Number=Sing	29 seek	obj
32	elsewhere	elsewhere	ADV	_	29 seek	advmod
33	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 took	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	take	past	It	vervain	while		vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme
2	tell speech: assert	to-infinitive		nothing			vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent nothing=Recipient
3	know	past	vervain				vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer
4	is a	past	fisherman	dark night			tree rules
5	find out	past	Mother				vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V PP.topic»: agent=Agent
6	seek	must	mother	mother's daughter		elsewhere property	vn hunt-35.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent daughter=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: «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/pg976/21/66/