The Brown Fairy Book, Story of Wali Dâd the Simple-Hearted, part 4, sentence 1
The path lay through a field of maize, where several men were working.
Who acts: path, several men · What happens: lie, work · To what, where: field
This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Story of Wali Dâd the Simple-Hearted, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (path, several men), 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 path | det |
| 2 | path | path | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 lay | nsubj |
| 3 | lay | lie | VERB | Mood=Ind Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | through | through | ADP | _ | 6 field | case |
| 5 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 field | det |
| 6 | field | field | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 lay | obl |
| 7 | of | of | ADP | _ | 8 maize | case |
| 8 | maize | maize | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 field | nmod |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 14 working | punct |
| 10 | where | where | ADV | PronType=Rel | 14 working | advmod |
| 11 | several | several | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 12 men | amod |
| 12 | men | man | NOUN | Number=Plur | 14 working | nsubj |
| 13 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 14 working | aux |
| 14 | working | work | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 6 field | conj |
| 15 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 lay | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | lie | past | the path | a field of maize | vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent through field=Location | ||||
| 2 | work | past · progressive | several men | vn employment-95.3 «NP V»: agent=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/pg3282/37/1/