Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, What the Old Man Does Is Always Right, sentence 54

Fowls can always pick up a few grains that lie about, and almost keep themselves.

Who acts: Fowls, few grains · What happens: pick up, lie, keep · To what, where: few grains, grains

This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, What the Old Man Does Is Always Right. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Fowls, few grains), 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	Fowls	fowl	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 pick	nsubj
2	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	4 pick	aux
3	always	always	ADV	PronType=Tot	4 pick	advmod
4	pick	pick	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
5	up	up	ADP	_	4 pick	compound:prt
6	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	8 grains	det
7	few	few	ADJ	Degree=Pos	8 grains	amod
8	grains	grain	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 pick	obj
9	that	that	PRON	PronType=Rel	10 lie	nsubj
10	lie	lie	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	8 grains	acl:relcl
11	about	about	ADV	_	10 lie	advmod
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 keep	punct
13	and	and	CCONJ	_	15 keep	cc
14	almost	almost	ADV	_	15 keep	advmod
15	keep	keep	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	4 pick	conj
16	themselves	themselves	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes	15 keep	obj
17	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 pick	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	pick up	can	Fowls	a few grains	always property	vn discover-84-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent grain=Topic
2	lie	present	a few grains		about property	vn assuming_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent
3	keep	infinitive	Fowls not said here	grains = grain	almost property	vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent themselves=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: «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/pg27200/132/54/