The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 4, sentence 87
They thought that the misfortune which for so many earlier years had befallen them had again happened and that their nestlings had disappeared.
Who acts: birds, misfortune, nestlings · What happens: think, befall, happen, disappear · To what, where: birds · 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 (birds, misfortune, nestlings), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.
Checked tree. This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (gutenberg:pg3282:339): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.
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 | 2 thought | nsubj |
| 2 | thought | think | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 17 happened | mark |
| 4 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 5 misfortune | det |
| 5 | misfortune | misfortune | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 happened | nsubj |
| 6 | which | which | PRON | PronType=Rel | 13 befallen | nsubj |
| 7 | for | for | ADP | _ | 11 years | case |
| 8 | so | so | ADV | _ | 9 many | advmod |
| 9 | many | many | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 11 years | amod |
| 10 | earlier | early | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 11 years | amod |
| 11 | years | year | NOUN | Number=Plur | 13 befallen | obl |
| 12 | had | have | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 13 befallen | aux |
| 13 | befallen | befall | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | 5 misfortune | acl:relcl |
| 14 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 13 befallen | obj |
| 15 | had | have | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 17 happened | aux |
| 16 | again | again | ADV | _ | 17 happened | advmod |
| 17 | happened | happen | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | 2 thought | ccomp |
| 18 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 23 disappeared | cc |
| 19 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 23 disappeared | mark |
| 20 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 21 nestlings | nmod:poss |
| 21 | nestlings | nestling | NOUN | Number=Plur | 23 disappeared | nsubj |
| 22 | had | have | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 23 disappeared | aux |
| 23 | disappeared | disappear | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | 17 happened | conj |
| 24 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 thought | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | think speech: other | past | birds = bird | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme | |||||
| 2 | befall | past · perfect | the misfortune | birds = bird | year | tree rules | |||
| 3 | happen | past · perfect | the misfortune | again | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||
| 4 | disappear | past · perfect | birds's nestlings | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
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: the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/4/87/