The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 21, sentence 130

The woman started back in horror; but what was her surprise when the head spoke, exactly as if it had a body joined on to it.

Who acts: woman, head · What happens: start back, be, speak, have, join on · To what, where: horror, surprise, body, head · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 21. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (woman, head), 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	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	2 woman	det
2	woman	woman	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 started	nsubj
3	started	start	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	back	back	ADV	_	3 started	advmod
5	in	in	ADP	_	6 horror	case
6	horror	horror	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 started	obl
7	;	;	PUNCT	_	12 surprise	punct
8	but	but	CCONJ	_	12 surprise	cc
9	what	what	PRON	PronType=Int	12 surprise	nsubj
10	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	12 surprise	cop
11	her	her	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	12 surprise	nmod:poss
12	surprise	surprise	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 started	parataxis
13	when	when	ADV	PronType=Int	16 spoke	advmod
14	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	15 head	det
15	head	head	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 spoke	nsubj
16	spoke	speak	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	12 surprise	advcl
17	,	,	PUNCT	_	22 had	punct
18	exactly	exactly	ADV	_	22 had	advmod
19	as	as	SCONJ	_	22 had	mark
20	if	if	SCONJ	_	22 had	mark
21	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	22 had	nsubj
22	had	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	16 spoke	conj
23	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	24 body	det
24	body	body	NOUN	Number=Sing	22 had	obj
25	joined	join	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	24 body	acl
26	on	on	ADP	_	25 joined	compound:prt
27	to	to	ADP	_	28 it	case
28	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	25 joined	obl
29	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 started	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	other	roles by
1	start back	past	the woman			horror		vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality
2	is a	past		woman's surprise				tree rules
3	speak speech: other	past	the head					vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent
4	have a condition, not said to happen	past	head	a body			exactly property	vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent body=Patient
5	join on	participle		a body not said here	head			vn mix-22.1-2-1 «NP V PP.patient»: agent=Patient to it=Co-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: «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/pg3282/21/130/