Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Storks, sentence 41

Oh, how they tottered at first, and were obliged to balance themselves with their wings, or they would have fallen to the ground below.

Who acts: tops · What happens: totter, oblige, balance, fall · To what, where: tops

This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Storks. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (tops), 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	Oh	oh	INTJ	_	5 tottered	discourse
2	,	,	PUNCT	_	5 tottered	punct
3	how	how	ADV	PronType=Int	5 tottered	advmod
4	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	5 tottered	nsubj
5	tottered	totter	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
6	at	at	ADP	_	7 first	case
7	first	first	ADV	NumForm=Word NumType=Ord	5 tottered	obl
8	,	,	PUNCT	_	11 obliged	punct
9	and	and	CCONJ	_	11 obliged	cc
10	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	11 obliged	aux:pass
11	obliged	oblige	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	5 tottered	conj
12	to	to	PART	_	13 balance	mark
13	balance	balance	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	11 obliged	xcomp
14	themselves	themselves	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes	13 balance	obj
15	with	with	ADP	_	17 wings	case
16	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	17 wings	nmod:poss
17	wings	wing	NOUN	Number=Plur	13 balance	obl
18	,	,	PUNCT	_	23 fallen	punct
19	or	or	CCONJ	_	23 fallen	cc
20	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	23 fallen	nsubj
21	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	23 fallen	aux
22	have	have	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	23 fallen	aux
23	fallen	fall	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	5 tottered	conj
24	to	to	ADP	_	26 ground	case
25	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	26 ground	det
26	ground	ground	NOUN	Number=Sing	23 fallen	obl
27	below	below	ADV	_	23 fallen	advmod
28	.	.	PUNCT	_	5 tottered	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	totter	past	tops = top			vn modes_of_being_with_motion-47.3 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme at first=Location
2	oblige	past · passive	tops = top not said here			vn compel-59.1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: clause=Result
3	balance	to-infinitive	tops = top not said here	tops = top	with tops's wings	vn other_cos-45.4 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent themselves=Patient with wing=Instrument
4	fall	would · perfect	tops = top		to the ground; below property	vn acquiesce-95.1-1 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent to ground=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/pg27200/183/41/