Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid, part 3, sentence 3
There sat the sea witch, allowing a toad to eat from her mouth, just as people sometimes feed a canary with a piece of sugar.
Who acts: people · What happens: sit, allow, eat, feed · To what, where: sea witch, toad, mouth, canary
This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Little Mermaid, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (people), 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 | There | there | PRON | PronType=Dem | 2 sat | expl |
| 2 | sat | sit | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 5 witch | det |
| 4 | sea | sea | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 witch | compound |
| 5 | witch | witch | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 sat | obj |
| 6 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 7 allowing | punct |
| 7 | allowing | allow | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 2 sat | advcl |
| 8 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 9 toad | det |
| 9 | toad | toad | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 allowing | obj |
| 10 | to | to | PART | _ | 11 eat | mark |
| 11 | eat | eat | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 7 allowing | advcl |
| 12 | from | from | ADP | _ | 14 mouth | case |
| 13 | her | her | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 14 mouth | nmod:poss |
| 14 | mouth | mouth | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 eat | obl |
| 15 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 20 feed | punct |
| 16 | just | just | ADV | _ | 20 feed | advmod |
| 17 | as | as | SCONJ | _ | 20 feed | mark |
| 18 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 20 feed | nsubj |
| 19 | sometimes | sometimes | ADV | PronType=Ind | 20 feed | advmod |
| 20 | feed | feed | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 2 sat | advcl |
| 21 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 22 canary | det |
| 22 | canary | canary | NOUN | Number=Sing | 20 feed | obj |
| 23 | with | with | ADP | _ | 25 piece | case |
| 24 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 25 piece | det |
| 25 | piece | piece | NOUN | Number=Sing | 20 feed | obl |
| 26 | of | of | ADP | _ | 27 sugar | case |
| 27 | sugar | sugar | NOUN | Number=Sing | 25 piece | nmod |
| 28 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 sat | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | sit | past | the sea witch | there | vn spatial_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location witch=Theme | ||||
| 2 | allow | gerund | a toad | vn allow-64.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent toad=Beneficiary | |||||
| 3 | eat | to-infinitive | toad's mouth | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V PP.source»: agent=Agent from mouth=Source | |||||
| 4 | feed | present | people | a canary | with a piece of sugar; sometimes property | vn feeding-39.7 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent canary=Recipient |
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/pg27200/77/3/