Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Bruce and the Spider., sentence 10
As he lay thinking, he saw a spider over his head, making ready to weave her web.
Who acts: use · What happens: lie, think, see, make, weave · To what, where: spider, head, web
This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Bruce and the Spider.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (use), 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 | As | as | SCONJ | _ | 3 lay | mark |
| 2 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 3 lay | nsubj |
| 3 | lay | lie | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 7 saw | advcl |
| 4 | thinking | think | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 3 lay | xcomp |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 3 lay | punct |
| 6 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 7 saw | nsubj |
| 7 | saw | see | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 8 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 9 spider | det |
| 9 | spider | spider | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 saw | obj |
| 10 | over | over | ADP | _ | 12 head | case |
| 11 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 12 head | nmod:poss |
| 12 | head | head | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 saw | obl |
| 13 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 14 making | punct |
| 14 | making | make | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 7 saw | advcl |
| 15 | ready | ready | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 14 making | xcomp |
| 16 | to | to | PART | _ | 17 weave | mark |
| 17 | weave | weave | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 15 ready | xcomp |
| 18 | her | her | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 19 web | nmod:poss |
| 19 | web | web | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 weave | obj |
| 20 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 7 saw | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | lie | past | use | tree rules | |||||
| 2 | think speech: other | gerund | use not said here | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 3 | see | past | use | a spider | use's head | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer spider=Stimulus | |||
| 4 | make | gerund | use not said here | ready property | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset | ||||
| 5 | weave | to-infinitive | use not said here | Scotland's web | vn build-26.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent web=Product |
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: «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 18442 (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/pg18442/12/10/