Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter X, sentence 2

“What a joy to lie under an inch of water basking in the sun, or beneath a shady ledge to watch the small creatures that speed like lightning on the rippling top.

Who acts: inch, small creatures · What happens: lie, bask, watch, speed · To what, where: sun, small creatures, rippling top

This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter X. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (inch, small creatures), 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	“	"	PUNCT	_	4 joy	punct
2	What	what	DET	PronType=Int	4 joy	det
3	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	4 joy	det
4	joy	joy	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root
5	to	to	PART	_	6 lie	mark
6	lie	lie	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	4 joy	acl
7	under	under	ADP	_	9 inch	case
8	an	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	9 inch	det
9	inch	inch	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 lie	obl
10	of	of	ADP	_	11 water	case
11	water	water	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 inch	nmod
12	basking	bask	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	9 inch	acl
13	in	in	ADP	_	15 sun	case
14	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	15 sun	det
15	sun	sun	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 basking	obl
16	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 ledge	punct
17	or	or	CCONJ	_	21 ledge	cc
18	beneath	beneath	ADP	_	21 ledge	case
19	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	21 ledge	det
20	shady	shady	ADJ	Degree=Pos	21 ledge	amod
21	ledge	ledge	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 joy	conj
22	to	to	PART	_	23 watch	mark
23	watch	watch	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	21 ledge	acl
24	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	26 creatures	det
25	small	small	ADJ	Degree=Pos	26 creatures	amod
26	creatures	creature	NOUN	Number=Plur	23 watch	obj
27	that	that	PRON	PronType=Rel	28 speed	nsubj
28	speed	speed	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	26 creatures	acl:relcl
29	like	like	ADP	_	30 lightning	case
30	lightning	lightning	NOUN	Number=Sing	28 speed	obl
31	on	on	ADP	_	34 top	case
32	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	34 top	det
33	rippling	rippling	NOUN	Number=Sing	34 top	compound
34	top	top	NOUN	Number=Sing	28 speed	obl
35	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 joy	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	lie in a quote	to-infinitive				under a inch of water	vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent under inch=Location
2	bask in a quote	gerund	a inch of water not said here		the sun		vn marvel-31.3 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer
3	watch in a quote	to-infinitive		the small creatures			vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent creature=Theme
4	speed in a quote	present	the small creatures		the rippling top	like lightning	vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme on top=Trajectory

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/pg2892/11/2/