The Blue Fairy Book, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was, sentence 99

Thereupon he seized them by the scruff of their necks, lifted them on to the carving bench, and screwed down their paws firmly.

Who acts: friend · What happens: seize, lift on, carve, screw down · To what, where: nails, carving bench, paws

This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (friend), 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	Thereupon	thereupon	ADV	_	3 seized	advmod
2	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 seized	nsubj
3	seized	seize	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 seized	obj
5	by	by	ADP	_	7 scruff	case
6	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	7 scruff	det
7	scruff	scruff	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 seized	obl
8	of	of	ADP	_	10 necks	case
9	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	10 necks	nmod:poss
10	necks	neck	NOUN	Number=Plur	7 scruff	nmod
11	,	,	PUNCT	_	12 lifted	punct
12	lifted	lift	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 seized	conj
13	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	12 lifted	obj
14	on	on	ADP	_	12 lifted	compound:prt
15	to	to	ADP	_	18 bench	case
16	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	18 bench	det
17	carving	carve	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	18 bench	amod
18	bench	bench	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 lifted	obl
19	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 screwed	punct
20	and	and	CCONJ	_	21 screwed	cc
21	screwed	screw	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	12 lifted	conj
22	down	down	ADP	_	21 screwed	compound:prt
23	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	24 paws	nmod:poss
24	paws	paw	NOUN	Number=Plur	21 screwed	obj
25	firmly	firmly	ADV	_	21 screwed	advmod
26	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 seized	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	seize	past	friend	nails = nail		by the scruff of nails's necks; thereupon property	vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme
2	lift on	past	friend not said here	nails = nail	the carving bench		vn put_direction-9.4 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent they=Theme to bench=Destination
3	carve	gerund					vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
4	screw down	participle	friend not said here	nails's paws		firmly property	vn tape-22.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent paw=Patient

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 Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (public domain in the USA). Tree: Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.

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