Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter IX, sentence 13

The waves held me back and held me back; the soft waters seemed to have grown hard; and it was as though I were urging through a rock as I strained towards Ulster from the sea.

Who acts: waves, soft waters, water, I · What happens: hold back, seem, grow, urge, strain · To what, where: me, rock, sea

This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IX. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (waves, soft waters, water, I), 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	2 waves	det
2	waves	wave	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 held	nsubj
3	held	hold	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	me	I	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	3 held	obj
5	back	back	ADV	_	3 held	advmod
6	and	and	CCONJ	_	7 held	cc
7	held	hold	VERB	Mood=Ind Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 held	conj
8	me	I	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	7 held	obj
9	back	back	ADV	_	7 held	advmod
10	;	;	PUNCT	_	14 seemed	punct
11	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 waters	det
12	soft	soft	ADJ	Degree=Pos	13 waters	amod
13	waters	water	NOUN	Number=Plur	14 seemed	nsubj
14	seemed	seem	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 held	parataxis
15	to	to	PART	_	17 grown	mark
16	have	have	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	17 grown	aux
17	grown	grow	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	14 seemed	xcomp
18	hard	hard	ADV	Degree=Pos	17 grown	advmod
19	;	;	PUNCT	_	27 urging	punct
20	and	and	CCONJ	_	27 urging	cc
21	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	27 urging	nsubj
22	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	27 urging	aux
23	as	as	ADV	_	27 urging	advmod
24	though	though	SCONJ	_	27 urging	mark
25	I	I	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	27 urging	nsubj
26	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	27 urging	aux
27	urging	urge	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	14 seemed	xcomp
28	through	through	ADP	_	30 rock	case
29	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	30 rock	det
30	rock	rock	NOUN	Number=Sing	27 urging	obl
31	as	as	SCONJ	_	33 strained	mark
32	I	I	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	33 strained	nsubj
33	strained	strain	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	14 seemed	advcl
34	towards	towards	ADP	_	35 Ulster	case
35	Ulster	Ulster	PROPN	Number=Sing	33 strained	obl
36	from	from	ADP	_	38 sea	case
37	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	38 sea	det
38	sea	sea	NOUN	Number=Sing	33 strained	obl
39	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 held	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	hold back	past	the waves	me			vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=Theme
2	hold back	past	the waves not said here	me			vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=Theme
3	seem	past	the soft waters				vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Theme clause=Attribute
4	grow	to-infinitive · perfect	the soft waters not said here			hard property	vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
5	urge	past · progressive	water		a rock		vn urge-58.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent
6	strain	past	I		the sea	towards Ulster	vn wipe_manner-10.4.1 «NP V NP PP.source»: agent=Agent from sea=Source

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: «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Project Gutenberg book 2892 (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/pg2892/10/13/