Tanglewood Tales, The Golden Fleece., part 3, sentence 13
To confess the truth, few people believed him when he said it.
Who acts: few people, Jason · What happens: confess, believe, say · To what, where: truth, Jason · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Golden Fleece., part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (few people, Jason), 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 | To | to | PART | _ | 2 confess | mark |
| 2 | confess | confess | VERB | Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 4 truth | det |
| 4 | truth | truth | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 confess | obj |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 8 believed | punct |
| 6 | few | few | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 7 people | amod |
| 7 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 8 believed | nsubj |
| 8 | believed | believe | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 truth | acl:relcl |
| 9 | him | he | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 8 believed | obj |
| 10 | when | when | ADV | PronType=Int | 12 said | advmod |
| 11 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 12 said | nsubj |
| 12 | said | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 8 believed | advcl |
| 13 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 12 said | obj |
| 14 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 confess | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | confess | to-infinitive | the truth | vn confess-37.10 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent truth=Topic | |||||
| 2 | believe | past | few people | Jason | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer he=Stimulus | ||||
| 3 | say speech: assert | past | Jason | truth | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent it=Topic |
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/pg976/27/13/