The Red Fairy Book, The Voice of Death, sentence 58

But when crowds of people went out from the town to examine the ill-fated pit that had swallowed up such numbers, and yet never seemed to be full, they could discover nothing.

Who acts: crowds, people · What happens: go out, examine, swallow up, not seem, be, discover · To what, where: town, ill fated pit, nothing

This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Voice of Death. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (crowds, people), 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	But	but	CCONJ	_	35 discover	cc
2	when	when	SCONJ	_	6 went	mark
3	crowds	crowd	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 went	nsubj
4	of	of	ADP	_	5 people	case
5	people	people	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 crowds	nmod
6	went	go	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	35 discover	advcl
7	out	out	ADV	_	6 went	advmod
8	from	from	ADP	_	10 town	case
9	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	10 town	det
10	town	town	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 went	obl
11	to	to	PART	_	12 examine	mark
12	examine	examine	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	6 went	advcl
13	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	17 pit	det
14	ill	ill	ADJ	Degree=Pos	17 pit	amod
15	-	-	PUNCT	_	14 ill	punct
16	fated	fated	ADJ	Degree=Pos	17 pit	amod
17	pit	pit	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 examine	obj
18	that	that	PRON	PronType=Rel	20 swallowed	nsubj:pass
19	had	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	20 swallowed	aux
20	swallowed	swallow	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	17 pit	acl:relcl
21	up	up	ADP	_	20 swallowed	compound:prt
22	such	such	ADJ	Degree=Pos	23 numbers	amod
23	numbers	number	NOUN	Number=Plur	20 swallowed	obj
24	,	,	PUNCT	_	28 seemed	punct
25	and	and	CCONJ	_	28 seemed	cc
26	yet	yet	ADV	_	28 seemed	advmod
27	never	never	ADV	PronType=Neg	28 seemed	advmod
28	seemed	seem	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	6 went	conj
29	to	to	PART	_	31 full	mark
30	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	31 full	cop
31	full	full	ADJ	Degree=Pos	28 seemed	xcomp
32	,	,	PUNCT	_	6 went	punct
33	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	35 discover	nsubj
34	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	35 discover	aux
35	discover	discover	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
36	nothing	nothing	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Neg	35 discover	obj
37	.	.	PUNCT	_	35 discover	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	go out	past	crowds of people		the town		out property	vn interact-36.6 «NP V»: agent=Agent
2	examine	to-infinitive	crowds of people not said here	the ill fated pit				vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent pit=Theme
3	swallow up	past · perfect · passive		the ill fated pit				tree rules
4	not seem	past	crowds of people not said here			yet		vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Theme
5	is	to-infinitive	crowds of people not said here				full property	tree rules
6	discover	could	people	nothing				vn discover-84-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nothing=Topic

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/pg540/27/58/