More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 4, sentence 1

The horrid thing broke into a screeching laugh, and pointed its brown finger at Tom. "

Who acts: horrid thing · What happens: break, screech, point · To what, where: screeching laugh, brown finger, Tom

This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, 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 (horrid thing), 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 thing	det
2	horrid	horrid	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 thing	amod
3	thing	thing	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 broke	nsubj
4	broke	break	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
5	into	into	ADP	_	8 laugh	case
6	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	8 laugh	det
7	screeching	screech	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	8 laugh	amod
8	laugh	laugh	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 broke	obl
9	,	,	PUNCT	_	11 pointed	punct
10	and	and	CCONJ	_	11 pointed	cc
11	pointed	point	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 broke	conj
12	its	its	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	14 finger	nmod:poss
13	brown	brown	ADJ	Degree=Pos	14 finger	amod
14	finger	finger	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 pointed	obj
15	at	at	ADP	_	16 Tom	case
16	Tom	Tom	PROPN	Number=Sing	11 pointed	obl
17	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 broke	punct
18	"	"	PUNCT	_	4 broke	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	break	past	the horrid thing			into a screeching laugh result	vn break-45.1 «NP V PP.result»: agent=Patient into laugh=Result
2	screech	gerund					vn animal_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent
3	point	past	the horrid thing not said here	thing's brown finger	Tom		vn wink-40.3.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent finger=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: «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 14241 (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/pg14241/18/1/