The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 17, sentence 62

‘The birds in the box told me,’ answered he, but he could say no more, as they stepped out into the open space that was crowded with people.

Who acts: birds, father, open space · What happens: tell, answer, say, step out, be · To what, where: me, father, more, open space · Speech: someone speaks here

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 (birds, father, open space), 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	‘	'	PUNCT	_	7 told	punct
2	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	3 birds	det
3	birds	bird	NOUN	Number=Plur	7 told	nsubj
4	in	in	ADP	_	6 box	case
5	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	6 box	det
6	box	box	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 birds	nmod
7	told	tell	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
8	me	I	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	7 told	iobj
9	,	,	PUNCT	_	11 answered	punct
10	’	'	PUNCT	_	11 answered	punct
11	answered	answer	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	7 told	parataxis
12	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	11 answered	obj
13	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 say	punct
14	but	but	CCONJ	_	17 say	cc
15	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	17 say	nsubj
16	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	17 say	aux
17	say	say	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	11 answered	conj
18	no	no	ADV	_	19 more	advmod
19	more	more	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	17 say	obj
20	,	,	PUNCT	_	23 stepped	punct
21	as	as	SCONJ	_	23 stepped	mark
22	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	23 stepped	nsubj
23	stepped	step	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	17 say	conj
24	out	out	ADP	_	23 stepped	compound:prt
25	into	into	ADP	_	28 space	case
26	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	28 space	det
27	open	open	ADJ	Degree=Pos	28 space	amod
28	space	space	NOUN	Number=Sing	23 stepped	obl
29	that	that	PRON	PronType=Rel	31 crowded	nsubj
30	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	31 crowded	cop
31	crowded	crowded	ADJ	Degree=Pos	28 space	acl:relcl
32	with	with	ADP	_	33 people	case
33	people	people	NOUN	Number=Plur	31 crowded	obl
34	.	.	PUNCT	_	7 told	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	other	roles by
1	tell speech: assert	past	the birds in the box		me			vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=Recipient
2	answer speech: assert	past			father			vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent he=Eventuality
3	say speech: assert	could	father	more				vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent more=Topic
4	step out	past	birds = bird			the open space		vn run-51.3.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme into space=Destination
5	is	past	the open space				with people; crowded property	tree rules

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/pg3454/17/62/