The Aesop for Children, The Tortoise and the Ducks, sentence 12

He seized the stick firmly with his teeth, the two Ducks took hold of it one at each end, and away they sailed up toward the clouds.

Who acts: Tortoise, two Ducks, Ducks · What happens: seize, take, sail up, hold · To what, where: stick, hold, clouds

This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Tortoise and the Ducks. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Tortoise, two Ducks, Ducks), 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	He	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 seized	nsubj
2	seized	seize	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	4 stick	det
4	stick	stick	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 seized	obj
5	firmly	firmly	ADV	_	2 seized	advmod
6	with	with	ADP	_	8 teeth	case
7	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	8 teeth	nmod:poss
8	teeth	tooth	NOUN	Number=Plur	2 seized	obl
9	,	,	PUNCT	_	13 took	punct
10	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	12 Ducks	det
11	two	two	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	12 Ducks	nummod
12	Ducks	duck	NOUN	Number=Plur	13 took	nsubj
13	took	take	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 seized	conj
14	hold	hold	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 took	obj
15	of	of	ADP	_	16 it	case
16	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 hold	nmod
17	one	one	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	13 took	obj
18	at	at	ADP	_	20 end	case
19	each	each	DET	PronType=Tot	20 end	det
20	end	end	NOUN	Number=Sing	17 one	nmod
21	,	,	PUNCT	_	25 sailed	punct
22	and	and	CCONJ	_	25 sailed	cc
23	away	away	ADV	_	25 sailed	advmod
24	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	25 sailed	nsubj
25	sailed	sail	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	13 took	conj
26	up	up	ADP	_	25 sailed	compound:prt
27	toward	toward	ADP	_	29 clouds	case
28	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	29 clouds	det
29	clouds	cloud	NOUN	Number=Plur	25 sailed	obl
30	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 seized	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	seize	past	Tortoise	the stick		with Tortoise's teeth; firmly property	vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent stick=Theme
2	take	past	the two Ducks	hold of hold			vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP ADVP»: agent=Instrument hold=Theme one=Destination
3	sail up	past	Ducks = duck		the clouds	away property	vn nonvehicle-51.4.2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent toward cloud=Trajectory
4	hold			hold			nom hold «act transitive»: of=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: «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, Project Gutenberg book 19994 (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/pg19994/4/12/