The Blue Fairy Book, Little Thumb, sentence 54
They scarce dared to speak or turn their heads.
What happens: dare, speak, turn · To what, where: birds, heads · 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: 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 | 3 dared | nsubj:pass |
| 2 | scarce | scarce | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 3 dared | aux:pass |
| 3 | dared | dare | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | root | root |
| 4 | to | to | PART | _ | 5 speak | mark |
| 5 | speak | speak | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 3 dared | xcomp |
| 6 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 7 turn | cc |
| 7 | turn | turn | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 5 speak | conj |
| 8 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 9 heads | nmod:poss |
| 9 | heads | head | NOUN | Number=Plur | 7 turn | obj |
| 10 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 dared | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | dare | present · passive | birds = bird | vn urge-58.1-1 «NP V NP S_ING»: subject=Recipient clause=Topic | |||||
| 2 | speak speech: other | to-infinitive | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent | ||||||
| 3 | turn | infinitive | birds's heads | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent head=Theme |
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/pg503/33/54/