The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 35, sentence 17

Sill he tried to go back, but he could not, and though he could not see the birds any longer he felt as if something were dragging him up and up.

Who acts: Sill, bird, something · What happens: try, go back, not see, feel, drag up · To what, where: birds, bird

This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 35. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Sill, bird, something), 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	Sill	sill	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 tried	nsubj
2	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 tried	nsubj
3	tried	try	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	to	to	PART	_	5 go	mark
5	go	go	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	3 tried	xcomp
6	back	back	ADV	_	5 go	advmod
7	,	,	PUNCT	_	10 could	punct
8	but	but	CCONJ	_	10 could	cc
9	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	10 could	nsubj
10	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	3 tried	conj
11	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	10 could	advmod
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	18 see	punct
13	and	and	CCONJ	_	18 see	cc
14	though	though	SCONJ	_	18 see	mark
15	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	18 see	nsubj
16	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	18 see	aux
17	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	18 see	advmod
18	see	see	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	3 tried	conj
19	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	20 birds	det
20	birds	bird	NOUN	Number=Plur	18 see	obj
21	any	any	ADV	_	22 longer	advmod
22	longer	long	ADV	Degree=Cmp	24 felt	advmod
23	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	24 felt	nsubj
24	felt	feel	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	18 see	advcl
25	as	as	SCONJ	_	29 dragging	mark
26	if	if	SCONJ	_	29 dragging	mark
27	something	something	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Ind	29 dragging	nsubj
28	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	29 dragging	aux
29	dragging	drag	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	24 felt	advcl
30	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	29 dragging	obj
31	up	up	ADP	_	29 dragging	compound:prt
32	and	and	CCONJ	_	33 up	cc
33	up	up	ADV	_	29 dragging	conj
34	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 tried	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	try	past	Sill			vn try-61.1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality
2	go back not said to happen	to-infinitive	Sill not said here			vn convert-26.6.2 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Patient
3	not see	could	Sill	the birds		vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer bird=Stimulus
4	feel	past	bird		long property	vn stimulus_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus
5	drag up	past · progressive	something	bird		vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=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: «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3027 (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/pg3027/35/17/