The Red Fairy Book, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, sentence 98

‘It was nothing,’ replied her eldest sister; ‘it was only the screech of the barn-owl that roosts in one of the turrets of the castle.’

Who acts: branch, nothing, barn owl · What happens: be, reply, roost · To what, where: nothing, eldest sister, screech

This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Dancing Princesses. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (branch, nothing, barn owl), 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	‘	'	PUNCT	_	4 nothing	punct
2	It	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 nothing	nsubj
3	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 nothing	cop
4	nothing	nothing	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Neg	7 replied	nsubj
5	,	,	PUNCT	_	4 nothing	punct
6	’	'	PUNCT	_	4 nothing	punct
7	replied	reply	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
8	her	her	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	10 sister	nmod:poss
9	eldest	eld	ADJ	Degree=Sup	10 sister	amod
10	sister	sister	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 replied	iobj
11	;	;	PUNCT	_	17 screech	punct
12	‘	'	PUNCT	_	17 screech	punct
13	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	17 screech	nsubj
14	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	17 screech	cop
15	only	only	ADV	_	17 screech	advmod
16	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	17 screech	det
17	screech	screech	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 replied	parataxis
18	of	of	ADP	_	22 owl	case
19	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	22 owl	det
20	barn	barn	NOUN	Number=Sing	22 owl	compound
21	-	-	PUNCT	_	20 barn	punct
22	owl	owl	NOUN	Number=Sing	17 screech	nmod
23	that	that	PRON	PronType=Rel	24 roosts	nsubj
24	roosts	roost	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	22 owl	acl:relcl
25	in	in	ADP	_	26 one	case
26	one	one	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	24 roosts	obl
27	of	of	ADP	_	29 turrets	case
28	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	29 turrets	det
29	turrets	turret	NOUN	Number=Plur	26 one	nmod
30	of	of	ADP	_	32 castle	case
31	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	32 castle	det
32	castle	castle	NOUN	Number=Sing	29 turrets	nmod
33	.	.	PUNCT	_	17 screech	punct
34	’	'	PUNCT	_	17 screech	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	other	roles by
1	is a	past	branch	nothing			tree rules
2	reply speech: assert	past	nothing		Lina's eldest sister		vn say-37.7-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent sister=Topic
3	is a	past	branch	the screech		of the barn owl	tree rules
4	roost	present	the barn owl			in one of the turrets of the castle	vn spatial_configuration-47.6 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in one=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 Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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/pg540/2/98/