The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 9, sentence 52

They did not, however, appear very fierce, and the duckling became less afraid as they approached him.

Who acts: hens, duckling · What happens: not do, appear, become, approach · To what, where: visitor

This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (hens, duckling), 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	They	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 did	nsubj
2	did	do	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	2 did	advmod
4	,	,	PUNCT	_	7 appear	punct
5	however	however	ADV	_	7 appear	advmod
6	,	,	PUNCT	_	7 appear	punct
7	appear	appear	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	2 did	parataxis
8	very	very	ADV	_	9 fierce	advmod
9	fierce	fierce	ADJ	Degree=Pos	7 appear	xcomp
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	14 became	punct
11	and	and	CCONJ	_	14 became	cc
12	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 duckling	det
13	duckling	duckling	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 became	nsubj
14	became	become	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 did	conj
15	less	less	ADV	Degree=Cmp	16 afraid	advmod
16	afraid	afraid	ADJ	Degree=Pos	14 became	xcomp
17	as	as	SCONJ	_	19 approached	mark
18	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	19 approached	nsubj
19	approached	approach	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	16 afraid	advcl
20	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	19 approached	obj
21	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 did	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	not do	past	hens = hen			vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
2	appear	present			fierce, however property	vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
3	become	past	the duckling		afraid property	vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient
4	approach	past	hens = hen	visitor		vn confront-98 «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/pg3027/9/52/