The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 20, sentence 1
They all sailed merrily across the sea chattering like a flock of magpies, or singing their favourite songs.
Who acts: They, sea, magpies · What happens: sail, chatter, sing · To what, where: sea, favourite songs
This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 20. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (They, sea, magpies), 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 | 3 sailed | nsubj |
| 2 | all | all | DET | PronType=Tot | 3 sailed | advmod |
| 3 | sailed | sail | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | merrily | merrily | ADV | _ | 3 sailed | advmod |
| 5 | across | across | ADP | _ | 7 sea | case |
| 6 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 7 sea | det |
| 7 | sea | sea | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 sailed | obl |
| 8 | chattering | chatter | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 7 sea | acl |
| 9 | like | like | ADP | _ | 11 flock | case |
| 10 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 11 flock | det |
| 11 | flock | flock | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 chattering | obl |
| 12 | of | of | ADP | _ | 13 magpies | case |
| 13 | magpies | magpie | NOUN | Number=Plur | 11 flock | nmod |
| 14 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 16 singing | punct |
| 15 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 16 singing | cc |
| 16 | singing | sing | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 3 sailed | advcl |
| 17 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 19 songs | nmod:poss |
| 18 | favourite | favourite | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 19 songs | amod |
| 19 | songs | song | NOUN | Number=Plur | 16 singing | obj |
| 20 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 sailed | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | sail | past | They | the sea | merrily property | vn nonvehicle-51.4.2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent across sea=Trajectory | |||
| 2 | chatter | gerund | the sea not said here | like a flock of magpies | vn animal_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent | ||||
| 3 | sing speech: express | gerund | They not said here | magpies's favourite songs | vn sound_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location song=Theme | ||||
| 4 | sing | magpies = magpie | nom song «communication intransitive»: poss=agent |
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 Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3282 (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/pg3282/20/1/