Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Story of Cincinnatus., sentence 26

The fierce men of the mountains were before us and behind us, and they were throwing rocks down upon us from above.

Who acts: fierce men, mountains · What happens: be, throw down · To what, where: rocks

This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Story of Cincinnatus.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fierce men, mountains), 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 men	det
2	fierce	fierce	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 men	amod
3	men	man	NOUN	Number=Plur	9 us	nsubj
4	of	of	ADP	_	6 mountains	case
5	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	6 mountains	det
6	mountains	mountain	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 men	nmod
7	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	9 us	cop
8	before	before	ADP	_	9 us	case
9	us	we	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	root	root
10	and	and	CCONJ	_	12 us	cc
11	behind	behind	ADP	_	12 us	case
12	us	we	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	9 us	conj
13	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 throwing	punct
14	and	and	CCONJ	_	17 throwing	cc
15	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	17 throwing	nsubj
16	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	17 throwing	aux
17	throwing	throw	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	9 us	acl
18	rocks	rock	NOUN	Number=Plur	17 throwing	obj
19	down	down	ADV	_	17 throwing	advmod
20	upon	upon	ADP	_	21 us	case
21	us	we	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	17 throwing	obl
22	from	from	ADP	_	23 above	case
23	above	above	ADV	_	17 throwing	obl
24	.	.	PUNCT	_	9 us	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	is	past	the fierce men of the mountains				before us		tree rules
2	throw down	past · progressive	mountains = mountain	rocks				upon us; down property	vn throw-17.1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.destinations»: agent=Agent rock=Theme upon we=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: «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/pg18442/27/26/