The Red Fairy Book, The Twelve Brothers, sentence 17
They found a very high oak tree, and there they sat, turn about, keeping their eyes always fixed on the castle tower.
Who acts: sons, eyes · What happens: find, sit, turn about, keep, fix · To what, where: high oak tree, eyes, castle tower
This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Brothers. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sons, eyes), 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 | 2 found | nsubj |
| 2 | found | find | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 7 tree | det |
| 4 | very | very | ADV | _ | 5 high | advmod |
| 5 | high | high | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 7 tree | amod |
| 6 | oak | oak | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 tree | compound |
| 7 | tree | tree | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 found | obj |
| 8 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 12 sat | punct |
| 9 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 12 sat | cc |
| 10 | there | there | PRON | PronType=Dem | 12 sat | expl |
| 11 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 12 sat | nsubj |
| 12 | sat | sit | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 found | parataxis |
| 13 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 14 turn | punct |
| 14 | turn | turn | VERB | Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin | 12 sat | conj |
| 15 | about | about | ADV | _ | 14 turn | advmod |
| 16 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 17 keeping | punct |
| 17 | keeping | keep | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 14 turn | advcl |
| 18 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 19 eyes | nmod:poss |
| 19 | eyes | eye | NOUN | Number=Plur | 17 keeping | obj |
| 20 | always | always | ADV | PronType=Tot | 21 fixed | advmod |
| 21 | fixed | fix | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 17 keeping | xcomp |
| 22 | on | on | ADP | _ | 25 tower | case |
| 23 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 25 tower | det |
| 24 | castle | castle | NOUN | Number=Sing | 25 tower | compound |
| 25 | tower | tower | NOUN | Number=Sing | 21 fixed | obl |
| 26 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 found | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | find | past | sons = son | a high oak tree | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tree=Topic | ||||
| 2 | sit | past | sons = son | there | vn assuming_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent | ||||
| 3 | turn about | infinitive | sons = son not said here | about property | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme | ||||
| 4 | keep | gerund | sons = son not said here | sons's eyes | tree rules | ||||
| 5 | fix | participle | sons's eyes not said here | the castle tower | always property | vn shake-22.3-2 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Patient |
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/pg540/41/17/