The Aesop for Children, The Cock and the Fox, sentence 13

But he spoke in an absent way, and stretching up on tiptoes, seemed to be looking at something afar off.

Who acts: Cock · What happens: speak, stretch up, seem, look · To what, where: absent way, tiptoes · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Cock and the Fox. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Cock), 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	But	but	CCONJ	_	3 spoke	cc
2	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 spoke	nsubj
3	spoke	speak	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	in	in	ADP	_	7 way	case
5	an	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	7 way	det
6	absent	absent	ADJ	Degree=Pos	7 way	amod
7	way	way	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 spoke	obl
8	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 seemed	punct
9	and	and	CCONJ	_	15 seemed	cc
10	stretching	stretch	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	15 seemed	advcl
11	up	up	ADP	_	10 stretching	compound:prt
12	on	on	ADP	_	13 tiptoes	case
13	tiptoes	tiptoe	NOUN	Number=Plur	10 stretching	obl
14	,	,	PUNCT	_	10 stretching	punct
15	seemed	seem	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 spoke	conj
16	to	to	PART	_	18 looking	mark
17	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	18 looking	aux
18	looking	look	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	15 seemed	advcl
19	at	at	ADP	_	20 something	case
20	something	something	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Ind	18 looking	obl
21	afar	afar	ADJ	Degree=Pos	20 something	amod
22	off	off	ADP	_	21 afar	compound:prt
23	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 spoke	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	where	other	roles by
1	speak speech: other	past	Cock	a absent way		vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent
2	stretch up	gerund		tiptoes		vn bend-45.2 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient
3	seem	past	Cock not said here			vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Theme
4	look	to-infinitive · progressive	Cock not said here		at something	vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at something=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 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/pg19994/70/13/