The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 17, sentence 25

He opened the lid, and three tiny little birds flew out, and flapping their wings they asked,

Who acts: son, three tiny little birds, birds · What happens: open, fly out, flap, ask · To what, where: lid, wings

This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 17. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (son, three tiny little birds, birds), 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	He	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 opened	nsubj
2	opened	open	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	4 lid	det
4	lid	lid	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 opened	obj
5	,	,	PUNCT	_	11 flew	punct
6	and	and	CCONJ	_	11 flew	cc
7	three	three	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	10 birds	nummod
8	tiny	tiny	ADJ	Degree=Pos	10 birds	amod
9	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	10 birds	amod
10	birds	bird	NOUN	Number=Plur	11 flew	nsubj
11	flew	fly	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 opened	conj
12	out	out	ADP	_	11 flew	compound:prt
13	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 flapping	punct
14	and	and	CCONJ	_	15 flapping	cc
15	flapping	flap	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	2 opened	advcl
16	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	17 wings	nmod:poss
17	wings	wing	NOUN	Number=Plur	15 flapping	obj
18	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	19 asked	nsubj
19	asked	ask	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	17 wings	acl:relcl
20	,	,	PUNCT	_	2 opened	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	open	past	son	the lid	vn spatial_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location lid=Theme
2	fly out	past	three tiny little birds		vn spatial_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
3	flap	gerund	son not said here	birds's wings	vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent wing=Patient
4	ask speech: ask	past	birds = bird	birds's wings not said here	vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent wing=Recipient

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/pg3454/17/25/