The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 4, sentence 81

They always told the children, before they left them, not to put their heads out of the nest; but, to-day, at the noise of the fight below, they looked down and so saw the whole affair.

Who acts: parents, fight · What happens: tell, leave, not put, look down, see, noise · To what, where: children, birds, heads, nest, whole affair · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, 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 (parents, fight), 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 told	nsubj
2	always	always	ADV	PronType=Tot	3 told	advmod
3	told	tell	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	5 children	det
5	children	child	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 told	iobj
6	,	,	PUNCT	_	9 left	punct
7	before	before	SCONJ	_	9 left	mark
8	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	9 left	nsubj
9	left	leave	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 told	conj
10	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	9 left	obj
11	,	,	PUNCT	_	14 put	punct
12	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	14 put	advmod
13	to	to	PART	_	14 put	mark
14	put	put	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	9 left	conj
15	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	16 heads	nmod:poss
16	heads	head	NOUN	Number=Plur	14 put	obj
17	out	out	ADP	_	20 nest	case
18	of	of	ADP	_	20 nest	case
19	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	20 nest	det
20	nest	nest	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 put	obl
21	;	;	PUNCT	_	37 looked	punct
22	but	but	CCONJ	_	37 looked	cc
23	,	,	PUNCT	_	22 but	punct
24	to	to	ADP	_	26 day	case
25	-	-	PUNCT	_	24 to	punct
26	day	day	NOUN	Number=Sing	37 looked	obl
27	,	,	PUNCT	_	30 noise	punct
28	at	at	ADP	_	30 noise	case
29	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	30 noise	det
30	noise	noise	NOUN	Number=Sing	26 day	conj
31	of	of	ADP	_	33 fight	case
32	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	33 fight	det
33	fight	fight	NOUN	Number=Sing	30 noise	nmod
34	below	below	ADV	_	33 fight	advmod
35	,	,	PUNCT	_	26 day	punct
36	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	37 looked	nsubj
37	looked	look	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 told	parataxis
38	down	down	ADV	_	37 looked	advmod
39	and	and	CCONJ	_	41 saw	cc
40	so	so	ADV	_	41 saw	advmod
41	saw	see	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	37 looked	conj
42	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	44 affair	det
43	whole	whole	ADJ	Degree=Pos	44 affair	amod
44	affair	affair	NOUN	Number=Sing	41 saw	obj
45	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 told	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	tell speech: assert	past	parents = parent		the children			always property	vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent child=Recipient
2	leave	past	parents = parent	birds = bird					vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme
3	not put	to-infinitive	parents = parent not said here	parents's heads		the nest			vn put-9.1-2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent head=Theme out nest=Destination
4	look down	past	parents = parent				day	down property	vn stimulus_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus
5	see	past	parents = parent not said here	the whole affair					vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer affair=Stimulus
6	noise		the fight						nom noise «event intransitive»: of=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/pg3282/4/81/