Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter I, sentence 11

They were almost utterly absorbed in it, but they did not whine with eagerness, nor did they cast any glance towards him for the encouraging word which he never failed to give when they sought it.

Who acts: signs, chase · What happens: absorb, not whine, cast, not fail, give, seek · To what, where: signs, flight, glance

This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (signs, chase), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

Checked tree. This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (gutenberg:pg2892:951): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

The tree

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	They	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	5 absorbed	nsubj:pass
2	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 absorbed	aux:pass
3	almost	almost	ADV	_	5 absorbed	advmod
4	utterly	utterly	ADV	_	5 absorbed	advmod
5	absorbed	absorb	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	root	root
6	in	in	ADP	_	7 it	case
7	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	5 absorbed	obl
8	,	,	PUNCT	_	13 whine	punct
9	but	but	CCONJ	_	13 whine	cc
10	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	13 whine	nsubj
11	did	do	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	13 whine	aux
12	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	13 whine	advmod
13	whine	whine	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	5 absorbed	conj
14	with	with	ADP	_	15 eagerness	case
15	eagerness	eagerness	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 whine	obl
16	,	,	PUNCT	_	20 cast	punct
17	nor	nor	CCONJ	Polarity=Neg	20 cast	cc
18	did	do	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	20 cast	aux
19	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	20 cast	nsubj
20	cast	cast	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	5 absorbed	conj
21	any	any	DET	PronType=Ind	22 glance	det
22	glance	glance	NOUN	Number=Sing	20 cast	obj
23	towards	towards	ADP	_	24 him	case
24	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	20 cast	obl
25	for	for	ADP	_	28 word	case
26	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	28 word	det
27	encouraging	encouraging	ADJ	Degree=Pos	28 word	amod
28	word	word	NOUN	Number=Sing	20 cast	obl
29	which	which	PRON	PronType=Rel	34 give	obj
30	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	32 failed	nsubj
31	never	never	ADV	PronType=Neg	32 failed	advmod
32	failed	fail	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	28 word	acl:relcl
33	to	to	PART	_	34 give	mark
34	give	give	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	32 failed	xcomp
35	when	when	ADV	PronType=Int	37 sought	advmod
36	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	37 sought	nsubj
37	sought	seek	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	34 give	advcl
38	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	37 sought	obj
39	.	.	PUNCT	_	5 absorbed	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	absorb	past · passive		signs = sign	flight	almost, utterly property	vn absorb-39.8 «NP V NP»: subject=Theme
2	not whine	past · do-support	signs = sign			with eagerness	vn sound_emission-43.2 «NP.location V PP.theme»: agent=Location with eagerness=Theme
3	cast	past · do-support	signs = sign	any glance		towards chase; for the encouraging word	vn build-26.1 «NP V NP PP.beneficiary»: agent=Agent glance=Product for word=Beneficiary
4	not fail	past	chase				vn succeed-74-3-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality
5	give	to-infinitive	chase not said here				vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent which=Theme
6	seek	past	signs = sign	glance			vn hunt-35.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=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: «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Project Gutenberg book 2892 (public domain in the USA). Tree: the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/33/11/