Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter V. “Tell on, my love,” Finnian murmured, sentence 17

At times they were pitched against the sky and staggered aloft, spinning gustily there like wind-blown leaves.

What happens: pitch, stagger, spin, blow · To what, where: cliffs, sky

This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter V. “Tell on, my love,” Finnian murmured. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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	At	at	ADP	_	2 times	case
2	times	time	NOUN	Number=Plur	5 pitched	obl
3	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	5 pitched	nsubj
4	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 pitched	aux:pass
5	pitched	pitch	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	root	root
6	against	against	ADP	_	8 sky	case
7	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	8 sky	det
8	sky	sky	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 pitched	obl
9	and	and	CCONJ	_	10 staggered	cc
10	staggered	stagger	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 pitched	conj
11	aloft	aloft	ADJ	Degree=Pos	10 staggered	xcomp
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	13 spinning	punct
13	spinning	spin	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	10 staggered	advcl
14	gustily	gustily	ADV	_	15 there	advmod
15	there	there	ADV	PronType=Dem	13 spinning	advmod
16	like	like	ADP	_	20 leaves	case
17	wind	wind	NOUN	Number=Sing	19 blown	compound
18	-	-	PUNCT	_	17 wind	punct
19	blown	blow	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	20 leaves	amod
20	leaves	leaf	NOUN	Number=Plur	13 spinning	obl
21	.	.	PUNCT	_	5 pitched	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	what, whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	pitch	past · passive	cliffs = cliff	the sky	time		vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP PP.destinations»: subject=Theme against sky=Destination
2	stagger	past				aloft property	vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer
3	spin	gerund		there		like blown leaves	vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme
4	blow	participle					vn split-23.2 «NP V apart»: agent=Patient

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/pg2892/6/17/