Old Indian Legends, Dance in a Buffalo Skull, sentence 23

But so merry were the mice they did not hear the “king, king” of sleepy birds, disturbed by the unaccustomed fire.

Who acts: merry mice · What happens: be, not hear, disturb · To what, where: merry mice, king, sleepy birds

This is a sentence of «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Dance in a Buffalo Skull. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (merry mice), 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	But	but	CCONJ	_	10 hear	cc
2	so	so	ADV	_	3 merry	advmod
3	merry	merry	ADJ	Degree=Pos	6 mice	amod
4	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	6 mice	cop
5	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	6 mice	det
6	mice	mouse	NOUN	Number=Plur	10 hear	nsubj
7	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	10 hear	nsubj
8	did	do	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	10 hear	aux
9	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	10 hear	advmod
10	hear	hear	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
11	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 king	det
12	“	"	PUNCT	_	13 king	punct
13	king	king	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 hear	obj
14	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 king	punct
15	king	king	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 king	appos
16	”	"	PUNCT	_	15 king	punct
17	of	of	ADP	_	19 birds	case
18	sleepy	sleepy	ADJ	Degree=Pos	19 birds	amod
19	birds	bird	NOUN	Number=Plur	15 king	nmod
20	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 disturbed	punct
21	disturbed	disturb	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	19 birds	acl
22	by	by	ADP	_	25 fire	case
23	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	25 fire	det
24	unaccustomed	unaccustomed	ADJ	Degree=Pos	25 fire	amod
25	fire	fire	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 disturbed	obl
26	.	.	PUNCT	_	10 hear	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	is a	past		the merry mice		tree rules
2	not hear	past · do-support	the merry mice	the king		vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer king=Stimulus
3	disturb	participle		sleepy birds not said here	by the unaccustomed fire	vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer

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: «Old Indian Legends» by Zitkala-Sa, Project Gutenberg book 338 (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/pg338/11/23/