Grimms' Fairy Tales, The White Snake, sentence 32

But the poor young ravens lay upon the ground, flapping their wings, and crying: ‘Oh, what helpless chicks we are!

Who acts: poor young ravens · What happens: lay, flap, cry, chick · To what, where: ground, wings

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 (poor young ravens), 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	_	6 lay	cc
2	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	5 ravens	det
3	poor	poor	ADJ	Degree=Pos	5 ravens	amod
4	young	young	ADJ	Degree=Pos	5 ravens	amod
5	ravens	raven	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 lay	nsubj
6	lay	lay	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
7	upon	upon	ADP	_	9 ground	case
8	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	9 ground	det
9	ground	ground	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 lay	obl
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	11 flapping	punct
11	flapping	flap	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	6 lay	advcl
12	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	13 wings	nmod:poss
13	wings	wing	NOUN	Number=Plur	11 flapping	obj
14	,	,	PUNCT	_	16 crying	punct
15	and	and	CCONJ	_	16 crying	cc
16	crying	cry	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	11 flapping	conj
17	:	:	PUNCT	_	6 lay	punct
18	‘	'	PUNCT	_	23 chicks	punct
19	Oh	oh	INTJ	_	23 chicks	discourse
20	,	,	PUNCT	_	19 Oh	punct
21	what	what	PRON	PronType=Int	23 chicks	nsubj
22	helpless	helpless	ADJ	Degree=Pos	23 chicks	amod
23	chicks	chick	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 lay	obl
24	we	we	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	25 are	nsubj
25	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	23 chicks	acl:relcl
26	!	!	PUNCT	_	6 lay	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	roles by
1	lay	present	the poor young ravens		the ground	vn put_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent upon ground=Destination
2	flap	gerund	the poor young ravens not said here	ravens's wings		vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent wing=Patient
3	cry speech: express	gerund	the poor young ravens not said here			vn manner_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent
4	chick					tree rules

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: 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/pg2591/34/32/