Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Fourteenth Evening, sentence 6

The mothers carried their little children at their backs, the elder ones tottered by their sides, and a poor starved horse tugged at a cart that bore their scanty effects.

Who acts: mothers, poor starved horse, cart · What happens: carry, totter, starve, tug, bear, effect · To what, where: little children, backs, elder ones, scanty effects

This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Fourteenth Evening. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mothers, poor starved horse, cart), 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	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	2 mothers	det
2	mothers	mother	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 carried	nsubj
3	carried	carry	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	6 children	nmod:poss
5	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	6 children	amod
6	children	child	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 carried	obj
7	at	at	ADP	_	9 backs	case
8	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	9 backs	nmod:poss
9	backs	back	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 carried	obl
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	13 ones	punct
11	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 ones	det
12	elder	elder	ADJ	Degree=Pos	13 ones	amod
13	ones	one	NOUN	Number=Plur	9 backs	appos
14	tottered	totter	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	13 ones	acl
15	by	by	ADP	_	17 sides	case
16	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	17 sides	nmod:poss
17	sides	side	NOUN	Number=Plur	14 tottered	obl
18	,	,	PUNCT	_	24 tugged	punct
19	and	and	CCONJ	_	24 tugged	cc
20	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	23 horse	det
21	poor	poor	ADJ	Degree=Pos	23 horse	amod
22	starved	starve	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	23 horse	amod
23	horse	horse	NOUN	Number=Sing	24 tugged	nsubj
24	tugged	tug	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	3 carried	conj
25	at	at	ADP	_	27 cart	case
26	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	27 cart	det
27	cart	cart	NOUN	Number=Sing	24 tugged	obl
28	that	that	PRON	PronType=Rel	29 bore	nsubj
29	bore	bear	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	27 cart	acl:relcl
30	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	32 effects	nmod:poss
31	scanty	scanty	NOUN	Number=Sing	32 effects	compound
32	effects	effect	NOUN	Number=Plur	29 bore	obj
33	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 carried	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	carry	past	the mothers	mothers's little children	mothers's backs		vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=Theme
2	totter	participle		the elder ones not said here		by mothers's sides	vn modes_of_being_with_motion-47.3 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme by side=Location
3	starve	participle					tree rules
4	tug	participle	a poor starved horse			at a cart	vn push-12-1 «NP V PP-Conative»: agent=Agent at cart=Theme
5	bear	past	a cart	mothers's scanty effects			vn birth-28.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent effect=Patient
6	effect		mothers = mother				nom effect «phenomenon 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: «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 27200 (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/pg27200/105/6/