Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Dryad, part 1, sentence 74

It seemed as if the tree were stretching forth its arms to clasp the messengers of the light.

Who acts: It, tree · What happens: seem, stretch, clasp · To what, where: arms, messengers

This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Dryad, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (It, tree), 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	It	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 seemed	nsubj
2	seemed	seem	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	as	as	SCONJ	_	8 stretching	mark
4	if	if	SCONJ	_	8 stretching	mark
5	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	6 tree	det
6	tree	tree	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 stretching	nsubj
7	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	8 stretching	aux
8	stretching	stretch	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	2 seemed	xcomp
9	forth	forth	ADV	_	8 stretching	advmod
10	its	its	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	11 arms	nmod:poss
11	arms	arm	NOUN	Number=Plur	8 stretching	obj
12	to	to	PART	_	13 clasp	mark
13	clasp	clasp	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	8 stretching	advcl
14	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	15 messengers	det
15	messengers	messenger	NOUN	Number=Plur	13 clasp	obj
16	of	of	ADP	_	18 light	case
17	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	18 light	det
18	light	light	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 messengers	nmod
19	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 seemed	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	seem	past	It			vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Theme clause=Attribute
2	stretch a condition, not said to happen	past · progressive	the tree	tree's arms	forth property	vn bend-45.2 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent arm=Patient
3	clasp	to-infinitive	the tree not said here	the messengers of the light		vn hold-15.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent messenger=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/pg27200/24/74/