The Brown Fairy Book, Story Of The King Who Would Be Stronger Than Fate, sentence 131

He flung himself on his back and watched the birds twittering and chattering in the trees above him.

Who acts: Nur, birds · What happens: fling, watch, twitter, chatter · To what, where: Nur, back, birds, trees

This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Story Of The King Who Would Be Stronger Than Fate. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Nur, birds), 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	He	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 flung	nsubj
2	flung	fling	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	himself	himself	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes	2 flung	obj
4	on	on	ADP	_	6 back	case
5	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	6 back	nmod:poss
6	back	back	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 flung	obl
7	and	and	CCONJ	_	8 watched	cc
8	watched	watch	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 flung	conj
9	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	10 birds	det
10	birds	bird	NOUN	Number=Plur	8 watched	obj
11	twittering	twitter	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	10 birds	acl
12	and	and	CCONJ	_	13 chattering	cc
13	chattering	chatter	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	11 twittering	conj
14	in	in	ADP	_	16 trees	case
15	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	16 trees	det
16	trees	tree	NOUN	Number=Plur	13 chattering	obl
17	above	above	ADP	_	18 him	case
18	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	16 trees	nmod
19	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 flung	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	roles by
1	fling	past	Nur	Nur	Nur's back	vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP PP.destinations»: agent=Agent himself=Theme on back=Destination
2	watch	past	Nur not said here	the birds		vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bird=Theme
3	twitter	gerund	the birds not said here			vn animal_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent
4	chatter	gerund	the birds not said here		the trees above Nur	vn sound_emission-43.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in tree=Location

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/pg3282/33/131/