The Blue Fairy Book, The History of Jack the Giant-killer, sentence 16

When they were black in the face he slid down the rope and stabbed them to the heart.

Who acts: giants, Jack · What happens: be, slide down, stab · To what, where: face, rope, giants

This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The History of Jack the Giant-killer. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (giants, Jack), 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	When	when	ADV	PronType=Int	4 black	advmod
2	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 black	nsubj
3	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 black	cop
4	black	black	ADJ	Degree=Pos	root	root
5	in	in	ADP	_	7 face	case
6	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	7 face	det
7	face	face	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 black	obl
8	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	9 slid	nsubj
9	slid	slide	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	7 face	acl:relcl
10	down	down	ADP	_	9 slid	compound:prt
11	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	12 rope	det
12	rope	rope	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 slid	obj
13	and	and	CCONJ	_	14 stabbed	cc
14	stabbed	stab	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	9 slid	conj
15	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 stabbed	obj
16	to	to	ADP	_	18 heart	case
17	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	18 heart	det
18	heart	heart	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 stabbed	obl
19	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 black	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	is	past	giants = giant		the face	black property	tree rules
2	slide down	past	Jack	the rope			vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent rope=Agent
3	stab	past	Jack not said here	giants = giant		to the heart result	vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP PP.result»: agent=Agent they=Patient to heart=Result

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/pg503/54/16/