Tanglewood Tales, The Minotaur., part 1, sentence 29

And again and again the rosy-checked and curly-headed boy would tug and strain at the huge mass of stone, striving, child as he was, to do what a giant could hardly have done without taking both of his great hands to the task.

Who acts: curly headed boy, boy · What happens: check, tug, strain, strive, be, do · To what, where: huge mass, child, giant, both, task

This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minotaur., part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (curly headed boy, boy), 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	And	and	CCONJ	_	2 again	cc
2	again	again	ADV	_	root	root
3	and	and	CCONJ	_	4 again	cc
4	again	again	ADV	_	2 again	conj
5	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	8 checked	det
6	rosy	rosy	ADJ	Degree=Pos	8 checked	compound
7	-	-	PUNCT	_	6 rosy	punct
8	checked	check	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	2 again	conj
9	and	and	CCONJ	_	15 tug	cc
10	curly	curly	ADJ	Degree=Pos	13 boy	amod
11	-	-	PUNCT	_	10 curly	punct
12	headed	headed	ADJ	Degree=Pos	13 boy	amod
13	boy	boy	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 tug	nsubj
14	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	15 tug	aux
15	tug	tug	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	8 checked	conj
16	and	and	CCONJ	_	17 strain	cc
17	strain	strain	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	15 tug	conj
18	at	at	ADP	_	21 mass	case
19	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	21 mass	det
20	huge	huge	ADJ	Degree=Pos	21 mass	amod
21	mass	mass	NOUN	Number=Sing	17 strain	obl
22	of	of	ADP	_	23 stone	case
23	stone	stone	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 mass	nmod
24	,	,	PUNCT	_	25 striving	punct
25	striving	strive	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	17 strain	advcl
26	,	,	PUNCT	_	27 child	punct
27	child	child	NOUN	Number=Sing	25 striving	obj
28	as	as	SCONJ	_	33 do	mark
29	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	33 do	nsubj
30	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	33 do	cop
31	,	,	PUNCT	_	33 do	punct
32	to	to	PART	_	33 do	mark
33	do	do	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	25 striving	xcomp
34	what	what	PRON	PronType=Int	40 done	obj
35	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	36 giant	det
36	giant	giant	NOUN	Number=Sing	40 done	nsubj:pass
37	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	40 done	aux
38	hardly	hardly	ADV	_	40 done	advmod
39	have	have	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	40 done	aux
40	done	do	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	33 do	advcl
41	without	without	SCONJ	_	42 taking	mark
42	taking	take	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	40 done	advcl
43	both	both	DET	PronType=Tot	42 taking	obj
44	of	of	ADP	_	47 hands	case
45	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	47 hands	nmod:poss
46	great	great	ADJ	Degree=Pos	47 hands	amod
47	hands	hand	NOUN	Number=Plur	43 both	nmod
48	to	to	ADP	_	50 task	case
49	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	50 task	det
50	task	task	NOUN	Number=Sing	42 taking	obl
51	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 again	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	check	participle					vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent
2	tug	would	curly headed boy				vn split-23.2 «NP V apart»: agent=Patient
3	strain	infinitive	curly headed boy not said here		the huge mass of stone		vn wipe_manner-10.4.1 «NP V NP.source»: agent=Agent
4	strive	gerund	curly headed boy not said here	child			tree rules
5	is	past	boy			do property	tree rules
6	do	could · perfect · passive		a giant		hardly property	tree rules
7	take	gerund		both	the task		vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent both=Theme to task=Destination

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/pg976/3/29/