The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 13, sentence 17

They were sitting one evening by the fire, when a lady appeared standing by them.

Who acts: doors, lady · What happens: sit, appear, stand

This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 13. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (doors, lady), 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 sitting	nsubj
2	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 sitting	aux
3	sitting	sit	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	root	root
4	one	one	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	5 evening	nummod
5	evening	evening	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 sitting	obl:unmarked
6	by	by	ADP	_	8 fire	case
7	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	8 fire	det
8	fire	fire	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 sitting	obl
9	,	,	PUNCT	_	13 appeared	punct
10	when	when	SCONJ	_	13 appeared	mark
11	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	12 lady	det
12	lady	lady	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 appeared	nsubj
13	appeared	appear	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 sitting	parataxis
14	standing	stand	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	13 appeared	xcomp
15	by	by	ADP	_	16 them	case
16	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 standing	obl
17	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 sitting	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	when	other	roles by
1	sit	past · progressive	doors = door	evening	by the fire	vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent by fire=Location
2	appear	past	a lady			vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Theme clause=Attribute
3	stand	gerund	a lady not said here		by doors = door	vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent by they=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 Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3454 (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/pg3454/13/17/