The Velveteen Rabbit, Opening, sentence 144
For a long time he lay very still, watching the bracken, and hoping that they would come back.
Who acts: bracken, strangers · What happens: lie, watch, hope, come back · To what, where: bracken
This is a sentence of «The Velveteen Rabbit» by Margery Williams Bianco, Opening. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (bracken, strangers), 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 | For | for | ADP | _ | 4 time | case |
| 2 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 4 time | det |
| 3 | long | long | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 4 time | amod |
| 4 | time | time | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 lay | obl |
| 5 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 6 lay | nsubj |
| 6 | lay | lie | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 7 | very | very | ADV | _ | 8 still | advmod |
| 8 | still | still | ADV | _ | 6 lay | advmod |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 10 watching | punct |
| 10 | watching | watch | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 6 lay | advcl |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 12 bracken | det |
| 12 | bracken | bracken | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 watching | obj |
| 13 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 15 hoping | punct |
| 14 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 15 hoping | cc |
| 15 | hoping | hope | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 6 lay | advcl |
| 16 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 19 come | mark |
| 17 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 19 come | nsubj |
| 18 | would | would | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 19 come | aux |
| 19 | come | come | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 15 hoping | advcl |
| 20 | back | back | ADV | _ | 19 come | advmod |
| 21 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 6 lay | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | lie | past | bracken | still; time | vn assuming_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent | ||||
| 2 | watch | gerund | bracken not said here | the bracken | vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bracken=Theme | ||||
| 3 | hope | gerund | bracken not said here | vn long-32.2 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Pivot | |||||
| 4 | come back | would | strangers = stranger | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=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: «The Velveteen Rabbit» by Margery Williams Bianco, Project Gutenberg book 11757 (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/pg11757/1/144/