The Blue Fairy Book, Snow-white and Rose-red, sentence 74

While trudging along they saw a big bird hovering in the air, circling slowly above them, but always descending lower, till at last it settled on a rock not far from them.

Who acts: air, boulders, big bird · What happens: trudge, see, hover, circle, descend, settle · To what, where: big bird, air, last

This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Snow-white and Rose-red. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (air, boulders, big bird), 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	While	while	SCONJ	_	2 trudging	mark
2	trudging	trudge	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	28 settled	advcl
3	along	along	ADP	_	5 saw	mark
4	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	5 saw	nsubj
5	saw	see	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 trudging	ccomp
6	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	8 bird	det
7	big	big	ADJ	Degree=Pos	8 bird	amod
8	bird	bird	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 saw	obj
9	hovering	hover	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	8 bird	acl
10	in	in	ADP	_	12 air	case
11	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	12 air	det
12	air	air	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 hovering	obl
13	,	,	PUNCT	_	14 circling	punct
14	circling	circle	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	9 hovering	conj
15	slowly	slowly	ADV	_	14 circling	advmod
16	above	above	ADP	_	17 them	case
17	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 circling	obl
18	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 descending	punct
19	but	but	CCONJ	_	21 descending	cc
20	always	always	ADV	PronType=Tot	21 descending	advmod
21	descending	descend	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	2 trudging	conj
22	lower	low	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	21 descending	xcomp
23	,	,	PUNCT	_	2 trudging	punct
24	till	till	SCONJ	_	28 settled	mark
25	at	at	ADP	_	26 last	case
26	last	last	ADJ	Degree=Pos	28 settled	obl
27	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	28 settled	nsubj
28	settled	settle	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
29	on	on	ADP	_	31 rock	case
30	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	31 rock	det
31	rock	rock	NOUN	Number=Sing	28 settled	obl
32	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	33 far	advmod
33	far	far	ADV	Degree=Pos	28 settled	advmod
34	from	from	ADP	_	35 them	case
35	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	33 far	obl
36	.	.	PUNCT	_	28 settled	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	trudge	gerund	air not said here				tree rules
2	see	past	boulders = boulder	a big bird			vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer bird=Stimulus
3	hover	gerund	a big bird not said here		the air		vn modes_of_being_with_motion-47.3 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in air=Location
4	circle	gerund	a big bird not said here			above boulders = boulder; slowly property	vn contiguous_location-47.8 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme
5	descend	gerund	air not said here			always, low property	vn meander-47.7-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
6	settle	past	air		last	on a rock; far property	vn odge-46-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme at last=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/pg503/36/74/