Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Magic and Witchcraft., part 5, sentence 127

Stories of this kind are common in all lands, but the witches about whom they are told generally assume the forms of beasts of prey, especially of wolves, or of cats.

Who acts: Stories, witches · What happens: be, tell, assume, form · To what, where: lands, Witches, forms, beasts · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Magic and Witchcraft., part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Stories, witches), 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	Stories	story	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 common	nsubj
2	of	of	ADP	_	4 kind	case
3	this	this	DET	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	4 kind	det
4	kind	kind	NOUN	Number=Sing	1 Stories	nmod
5	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	6 common	cop
6	common	common	ADJ	Degree=Pos	root	root
7	in	in	ADP	_	9 lands	case
8	all	all	DET	PronType=Tot	9 lands	det
9	lands	land	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 common	obl
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	20 assume	punct
11	but	but	CCONJ	_	20 assume	cc
12	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 witches	det
13	witches	witch	NOUN	Number=Plur	20 assume	nsubj
14	about	about	ADP	_	15 whom	case
15	whom	whom	PRON	PronType=Rel	18 told	obl
16	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	18 told	nsubj:pass
17	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	18 told	aux:pass
18	told	tell	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	13 witches	acl:relcl
19	generally	generally	ADV	_	18 told	advmod
20	assume	assume	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	6 common	conj
21	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	22 forms	det
22	forms	form	NOUN	Number=Plur	20 assume	obj
23	of	of	ADP	_	24 beasts	case
24	beasts	beast	NOUN	Number=Plur	22 forms	nmod
25	of	of	ADP	_	26 prey	case
26	prey	prey	NOUN	Number=Sing	24 beasts	nmod
27	,	,	PUNCT	_	30 wolves	punct
28	especially	especially	ADV	_	30 wolves	advmod
29	of	of	ADP	_	30 wolves	case
30	wolves	wolf	NOUN	Number=Plur	20 assume	obl
31	,	,	PUNCT	_	34 cats	punct
32	or	or	CCONJ	_	34 cats	cc
33	of	of	ADP	_	34 cats	case
34	cats	cat	NOUN	Number=Plur	30 wolves	conj
35	.	.	PUNCT	_	6 common	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	is	present	Stories of this kind		all lands	common property	tree rules
2	tell speech: assert	present · passive		Witches = witch		about the witches; generally property	vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_ING»: subject=Recipient about whom=Topic
3	assume	present	the witches	the forms of beasts of prey		of wolves or cats	vn adopt-93.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent form=Theme
4	form			beasts of prey			nom form «communication 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: «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Project Gutenberg book 22373 (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/pg22373/46/127/