Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, First Visit, sentence 25

They sit backwards on their painting brushes or quill pens, for steel pens won't bear them--they're too stiff.

Who acts: notabilities, steel pens · What happens: sit, not bear, be · To what, where: painting brushes, notabilities

This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, First Visit. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (notabilities, steel pens), 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	They	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 sit	nsubj
2	sit	sit	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	backwards	backwards	ADV	_	2 sit	advmod
4	on	on	ADP	_	7 brushes	case
5	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	7 brushes	nmod:poss
6	painting	painting	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 brushes	compound
7	brushes	brush	NOUN	Number=Plur	2 sit	obl
8	or	or	CCONJ	_	10 pens	cc
9	quill	quill	NOUN	_	10 pens	compound
10	pens	pen	NOUN	Number=Plur	7 brushes	conj
11	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 bear	punct
12	for	for	SCONJ	_	17 bear	mark
13	steel	steel	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 pens	compound
14	pens	pen	NOUN	Number=Plur	17 bear	nsubj
15	wo	will	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	17 bear	aux
16	n't	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	17 bear	advmod
17	bear	bear	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 sit	parataxis
18	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	17 bear	obj
19	--	--	PUNCT	_	23 stiff	punct
20	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	23 stiff	nsubj
21	're	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	23 stiff	cop
22	too	too	ADV	_	23 stiff	advmod
23	stiff	stiff	ADJ	Degree=Pos	17 bear	conj
24	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 sit	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	sit	present	notabilities = notability		notabilities's painting brushes or quill pens	backwards property	vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on brush=Location
2	not bear	future	steel pens	notabilities = notability			vn birth-28.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Patient
3	is	present	notabilities = notability			stiff property	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: «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/pg27200/136/25/