The Blue Fairy Book, The Terrible Head, sentence 24

Then they told him that somewhere, a long way off, there dwelt three dreadful sisters, monstrous ogrish women, with golden wings and claws of brass, and with serpents growing on their heads instead of hair.

Who acts: subjects, serpents · What happens: tell, dwell, grow · To what, where: boy, three dreadful sisters, heads · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Terrible Head. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (subjects, serpents), 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	Then	then	ADV	PronType=Dem	3 told	advmod
2	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 told	nsubj
3	told	tell	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 told	iobj
5	that	that	SCONJ	_	14 dwelt	mark
6	somewhere	somewhere	ADV	PronType=Ind	14 dwelt	advmod
7	,	,	PUNCT	_	6 somewhere	punct
8	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	10 way	det
9	long	long	ADJ	Degree=Pos	10 way	amod
10	way	way	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 off	obl:unmarked
11	off	off	ADV	_	6 somewhere	conj
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	6 somewhere	punct
13	there	there	PRON	PronType=Dem	14 dwelt	expl
14	dwelt	dwell	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 told	advcl
15	three	three	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	17 sisters	nummod
16	dreadful	dreadful	ADJ	Degree=Pos	17 sisters	amod
17	sisters	sister	NOUN	Number=Plur	14 dwelt	obj
18	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 women	punct
19	monstrous	monstrous	ADJ	Degree=Pos	21 women	amod
20	ogrish	ogrish	ADJ	Degree=Pos	21 women	amod
21	women	woman	NOUN	Number=Plur	17 sisters	conj
22	,	,	PUNCT	_	25 wings	punct
23	with	with	ADP	_	25 wings	case
24	golden	golden	ADJ	Degree=Pos	25 wings	amod
25	wings	wing	NOUN	Number=Plur	14 dwelt	obl
26	and	and	CCONJ	_	27 claws	cc
27	claws	claw	NOUN	Number=Plur	25 wings	conj
28	of	of	ADP	_	29 brass	case
29	brass	brass	NOUN	Number=Sing	27 claws	nmod
30	,	,	PUNCT	_	33 serpents	punct
31	and	and	CCONJ	_	33 serpents	cc
32	with	with	ADP	_	33 serpents	case
33	serpents	serpent	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 told	obl
34	growing	grow	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	33 serpents	acl
35	on	on	ADP	_	37 heads	case
36	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	37 heads	nmod:poss
37	heads	head	NOUN	Number=Plur	34 growing	obl
38	instead	instead	ADV	ExtPos=ADP	40 hair	case
39	of	of	ADP	_	38 instead	fixed
40	hair	hair	NOUN	Number=Sing	34 growing	obl
41	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 told	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	tell speech: assert	past	subjects = subject		boy		then	with serpents	vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent he=Recipient
2	dwell	past	subjects = subject not said here	three dreadful sisters and monstrous ogrish women		there		with golden wings and claws of brass; somewhere property	vn lodge-46 «NP V ADV»: agent=Theme sister=Location
3	grow	gerund	serpents not said here			subjects's heads		instead hair	vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme on head=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 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.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/27/24/