Grimms' Fairy Tales, The White Snake, sentence 15

Now some ducks were sitting together quietly by a brook and taking their rest; and, whilst they were making their feathers smooth with their bills, they were having a confidential conversation together.

Who acts: ducks · What happens: sit, take, make, have, bill · To what, where: rest, feathers, confidential conversation

This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The White Snake. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (ducks), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

Checked tree. This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (gutenberg:pg2591:1466): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

The tree

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	Now	now	ADV	PronType=Dem	5 sitting	advmod
2	some	some	DET	PronType=Ind	3 ducks	det
3	ducks	duck	NOUN	Number=Plur	5 sitting	nsubj
4	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 sitting	aux
5	sitting	sit	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	root	root
6	together	together	ADV	_	5 sitting	advmod
7	quietly	quietly	ADV	_	5 sitting	advmod
8	by	by	ADP	_	10 brook	case
9	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	10 brook	det
10	brook	brook	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 sitting	obl
11	and	and	CCONJ	_	12 taking	cc
12	taking	take	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	5 sitting	conj
13	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	14 rest	nmod:poss
14	rest	rest	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 taking	obj
15	;	;	PUNCT	_	31 having	punct
16	and	and	CCONJ	_	31 having	cc
17	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 making	punct
18	whilst	whilst	SCONJ	_	21 making	mark
19	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 making	nsubj
20	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	21 making	aux
21	making	make	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	31 having	advcl
22	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	23 feathers	nmod:poss
23	feathers	feather	NOUN	Number=Plur	21 making	obj
24	smooth	smooth	ADJ	Degree=Pos	21 making	xcomp
25	with	with	ADP	_	27 bills	case
26	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	27 bills	nmod:poss
27	bills	bill	NOUN	Number=Plur	21 making	obl
28	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 making	punct
29	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	31 having	nsubj
30	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	31 having	aux
31	having	have	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	5 sitting	conj
32	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	34 conversation	det
33	confidential	confidential	ADJ	Degree=Pos	34 conversation	amod
34	conversation	conversation	NOUN	Number=Sing	31 having	obj
35	together	together	ADV	_	31 having	advmod
36	.	.	PUNCT	_	5 sitting	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	sit	past · progressive	some ducks		now	by a brook; quietly, together property	vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent by brook=Location
2	take	gerund	some ducks not said here	ducks's rest			vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent rest=Theme
3	make	past · progressive	ducks = duck	ducks's feathers		with ducks's bills; smooth property	vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset feather=Product
4	have	past · progressive	ducks = duck	a confidential conversation		together property	vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent conversation=Patient
5	bill		ducks = duck				nom bill «communication transitive»: poss=agent

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: «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Project Gutenberg book 2591 (public domain in the USA). Tree: the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/34/15/