The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 20, sentence 81

Before he had walked very far he met a boy who came whistling along, hitting at the tops of the flowers with a stick.

Who acts: way, boy · What happens: walk, meet, come, whistle, hit · To what, where: boy

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 (way, boy), 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	Before	before	SCONJ	_	4 walked	mark
2	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 walked	nsubj
3	had	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 walked	aux
4	walked	walk	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	8 met	advcl
5	very	very	ADV	_	6 far	advmod
6	far	far	ADV	Degree=Pos	4 walked	advmod
7	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	8 met	nsubj
8	met	meet	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
9	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	10 boy	det
10	boy	boy	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 met	obj
11	who	who	PRON	PronType=Rel	12 came	nsubj
12	came	come	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	10 boy	acl:relcl
13	whistling	whistle	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	12 came	xcomp
14	along	along	ADV	_	13 whistling	advmod
15	,	,	PUNCT	_	16 hitting	punct
16	hitting	hit	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	13 whistling	conj
17	at	at	ADP	_	19 tops	case
18	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	19 tops	det
19	tops	top	NOUN	Number=Plur	16 hitting	obl
20	of	of	ADP	_	22 flowers	case
21	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	22 flowers	det
22	flowers	flower	NOUN	Number=Plur	19 tops	nmod
23	with	with	ADP	_	25 stick	case
24	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	25 stick	det
25	stick	stick	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 hitting	obl
26	.	.	PUNCT	_	8 met	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	walk	past · perfect	way		far property	vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
2	meet	past	way	a boy		vn meet-36.3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent boy=Co-Agent
3	come	past	a boy			tree rules
4	whistle	gerund	a boy not said here		along property	vn manner_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent
5	hit	gerund	a boy not said here		with a stick; at the tops of the flowers	vn hit-18.1-1 «NP V PP PP»: agent=Agent at top=Patient with stick=Instrument

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/pg3282/20/81/