Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Ugly Duckling, sentence 8

The other ducks liked much better to swim about in the river than to climb the slippery banks, and sit under a burdock leaf, to have a gossip with her.

Who acts: other ducks · What happens: like, swim, climb, sit, have · To what, where: slippery banks, burdock leaf, gossip

This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Ugly Duckling. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (other ducks), 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	3 ducks	det
2	other	other	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 ducks	amod
3	ducks	duck	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 liked	nsubj
4	liked	like	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
5	much	much	ADV	_	6 better	advmod
6	better	good	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	4 liked	ccomp
7	to	to	PART	_	8 swim	mark
8	swim	swim	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	6 better	csubj
9	about	about	ADP	_	12 river	case
10	in	in	ADP	_	12 river	case
11	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	12 river	det
12	river	river	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 swim	obl
13	than	than	SCONJ	_	15 climb	mark
14	to	to	PART	_	15 climb	mark
15	climb	climb	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	8 swim	advcl
16	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	18 banks	det
17	slippery	slippery	ADJ	Degree=Pos	18 banks	amod
18	banks	bank	NOUN	Number=Plur	15 climb	obj
19	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 sit	punct
20	and	and	CCONJ	_	21 sit	cc
21	sit	sit	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	15 climb	conj
22	under	under	ADP	_	25 leaf	case
23	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	25 leaf	det
24	burdock	burdock	NOUN	Number=Sing	25 leaf	compound
25	leaf	leaf	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 sit	obl
26	,	,	PUNCT	_	28 have	punct
27	to	to	PART	_	28 have	mark
28	have	have	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	21 sit	conj
29	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	30 gossip	det
30	gossip	gossip	NOUN	Number=Sing	28 have	obj
31	with	with	ADP	_	32 her	case
32	her	she	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	28 have	obl
33	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 liked	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	like	past	the other ducks				vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Pivot
2	swim	to-infinitive				about the river	vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme about river=Trajectory
3	climb	to-infinitive		the slippery banks			vn run-51.3.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Initial_Location bank=Theme
4	sit	infinitive			a burdock leaf		vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent under leaf=Location
5	have	to-infinitive		a gossip		with duck	vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent gossip=Patient

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/pg27200/201/8/