The Red Fairy Book, The Ratcatcher, sentence 2

They were great black creatures that ran boldly in broad daylight through the streets, and swarmed so, all over the houses, that people at last could not put their hand or foot down anywhere without touching one.

Who acts: bands, great black creatures, people · What happens: be, run, swarm, not put, touch · To what, where: great black creatures, broad daylight, houses, that, one

This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Ratcatcher. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (bands, great black creatures, 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	They	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	5 creatures	nsubj
2	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 creatures	cop
3	great	great	ADJ	Degree=Pos	5 creatures	amod
4	black	black	ADJ	Degree=Pos	5 creatures	amod
5	creatures	creature	NOUN	Number=Plur	root	root
6	that	that	PRON	PronType=Rel	7 ran	nsubj
7	ran	run	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 creatures	acl:relcl
8	boldly	boldly	ADV	Degree=Pos	7 ran	advmod
9	in	in	ADP	_	11 daylight	case
10	broad	broad	ADJ	Degree=Pos	11 daylight	amod
11	daylight	daylight	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 ran	obl
12	through	through	ADP	_	14 streets	case
13	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	14 streets	det
14	streets	street	NOUN	Number=Plur	7 ran	obl
15	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 swarmed	punct
16	and	and	CCONJ	_	17 swarmed	cc
17	swarmed	swarm	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	5 creatures	conj
18	so	so	ADV	_	17 swarmed	advmod
19	,	,	PUNCT	_	23 houses	punct
20	all	all	ADV	_	23 houses	advmod
21	over	over	ADP	_	23 houses	case
22	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	23 houses	det
23	houses	house	NOUN	Number=Plur	17 swarmed	obl
24	,	,	PUNCT	_	31 put	punct
25	that	that	PRON	PronType=Rel	31 put	obj
26	people	people	NOUN	Number=Plur	31 put	nsubj
27	at	at	ADP	_	28 last	case
28	last	last	ADJ	Degree=Pos	26 people	nmod
29	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	31 put	aux
30	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	31 put	advmod
31	put	put	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	5 creatures	parataxis
32	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	33 hand	nmod:poss
33	hand	hand	NOUN	Number=Sing	31 put	obj
34	or	or	CCONJ	_	35 foot	cc
35	foot	foot	NOUN	Number=Sing	33 hand	conj
36	down	down	ADV	_	37 anywhere	advmod
37	anywhere	anywhere	ADV	PronType=Ind	31 put	advmod
38	without	without	SCONJ	_	39 touching	mark
39	touching	touch	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	31 put	advcl
40	one	one	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	39 touching	obj
41	.	.	PUNCT	_	5 creatures	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	is a	past	bands = band	great black creatures			tree rules
2	run	past	great black creatures		broad daylight	through the streets; boldly property	vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in daylight=Trajectory
3	swarm	participle	bands = band not said here		the houses		vn swarm-47.5.1-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme over house=Location
4	not put	could	people at last	that		anywhere property	vn invest-13.5.4-1 «NP V NP PP.goal»: agent=Agent that=Asset hand=Goal
5	touch	gerund	people at last not said here	one			vn contiguous_location-47.8-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme one=Co-Theme

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/pg540/32/2/