The Blue Fairy Book, The Forty Thieves, sentence 3
One day, when Ali Baba was in the forest, he saw a troop of men on horseback, coming toward him in a cloud of dust.
Who acts: Ali Baba, Baba · What happens: be, see, come, cloud · To what, where: forest, troop, cloud, dust
This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Forty Thieves. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Ali Baba, Baba), 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 | One | one | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 2 day | nummod |
| 2 | day | day | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 saw | obl:unmarked |
| 3 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 10 forest | punct |
| 4 | when | when | ADV | PronType=Int | 10 forest | advmod |
| 5 | Ali | Ali | PROPN | Number=Sing | 6 Baba | compound |
| 6 | Baba | Baba | PROPN | Number=Sing | 10 forest | nsubj |
| 7 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 10 forest | cop |
| 8 | in | in | ADP | _ | 10 forest | case |
| 9 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 10 forest | det |
| 10 | forest | forest | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 day | conj |
| 11 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 2 day | punct |
| 12 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 13 saw | nsubj |
| 13 | saw | see | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 14 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 15 troop | det |
| 15 | troop | troop | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 saw | obj |
| 16 | of | of | ADP | _ | 17 men | case |
| 17 | men | man | NOUN | Number=Plur | 15 troop | nmod |
| 18 | on | on | ADP | _ | 19 horseback | case |
| 19 | horseback | horseback | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 men | nmod |
| 20 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 21 coming | punct |
| 21 | coming | come | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 13 saw | conj |
| 22 | toward | toward | ADP | _ | 23 him | case |
| 23 | him | he | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 21 coming | obl |
| 24 | in | in | ADP | _ | 26 cloud | case |
| 25 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 26 cloud | det |
| 26 | cloud | cloud | NOUN | Number=Sing | 21 coming | obl |
| 27 | of | of | ADP | _ | 28 dust | case |
| 28 | dust | dust | NOUN | Number=Sing | 26 cloud | nmod |
| 29 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 13 saw | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is | past | Ali Baba | the forest | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | see | past | Baba | a troop of men on horseback | day | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer troop=Stimulus | |||
| 3 | come | gerund | Baba not said here | a cloud of dust | toward Baba | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial_location»: agent=Theme toward he=Initial_Location | |||
| 4 | cloud | dust | nom cloud «phenomenon transitive»: of=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.
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/34/3/