Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Buckwheat, sentence 30

Then the sparrows asked why he was weeping, when all around him seemed so cheerful. "

Who acts: sparrows, sparrow · What happens: ask, weep, seem · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Buckwheat. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sparrows, sparrow), 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	Then	then	ADV	PronType=Dem	4 asked	advmod
2	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	3 sparrows	det
3	sparrows	sparrow	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 asked	nsubj
4	asked	ask	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
5	why	why	ADV	PronType=Int	8 weeping	advmod
6	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	8 weeping	nsubj
7	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	8 weeping	aux
8	weeping	weep	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	4 asked	ccomp
9	,	,	PUNCT	_	14 seemed	punct
10	when	when	ADV	PronType=Int	14 seemed	advmod
11	all	all	ADV	_	14 seemed	advmod
12	around	around	ADP	_	13 him	case
13	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 seemed	obl
14	seemed	seem	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 asked	conj
15	so	so	ADV	_	16 cheerful	advmod
16	cheerful	cheerful	ADJ	Degree=Pos	14 seemed	xcomp
17	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 asked	punct
18	"	"	PUNCT	_	4 asked	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	when	other	roles by
1	ask speech: ask	past	the sparrows	then		vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
2	weep	past · progressive	sparrow			vn breathe-40.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent
3	seem	past	the sparrows not said here		around sparrow; all, cheerful property	vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=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/pg27200/14/30/