The Blue Fairy Book, Little Thumb, sentence 25

They dared not go in, but sat themselves down at the door, listening to what their father and mother were saying.

Who acts: brothers, father · What happens: not dare, not go in, sit down, listen, say · To what, where: brothers, door · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Little Thumb. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (brothers, father), 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	2 dared	nsubj
2	dared	dare	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	2 dared	advmod
4	go	go	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 dared	xcomp
5	in	in	ADV	_	4 go	advmod
6	,	,	PUNCT	_	8 sat	punct
7	but	but	CCONJ	_	8 sat	cc
8	sat	sit	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 dared	conj
9	themselves	themselves	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes	8 sat	obj
10	down	down	ADP	_	8 sat	compound:prt
11	at	at	ADP	_	13 door	case
12	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 door	det
13	door	door	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 sat	obl
14	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 listening	punct
15	listening	listen	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	8 sat	advcl
16	to	to	ADP	_	17 what	case
17	what	what	PRON	PronType=Rel	15 listening	obl
18	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	19 father	nmod:poss
19	father	father	NOUN	Number=Sing	23 saying	nsubj
20	and	and	CCONJ	_	21 mother	cc
21	mother	mother	NOUN	Number=Sing	19 father	conj
22	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	23 saying	aux
23	saying	say	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	17 what	acl:relcl
24	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 dared	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	roles by
1	not dare	past	brothers = brother			vn urge-58.1-1 «NP V NP S_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
2	not go in	infinitive	brothers = brother not said here			vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
3	sit down	past	brothers = brother not said here	brothers = brother	the door	tree rules
4	listen	gerund	brothers = brother not said here			vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent to what=Theme
5	say speech: assert	past · progressive	brothers's father and mother			vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent

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/pg503/33/25/