The Red Fairy Book, The Nettle Spinner, sentence 86
The moment their backs were turned the stone untied itself.
Who acts: moment · What happens: turn, untie · To what, where: backs, stone
This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (moment), 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 | The | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 2 moment | det |
| 2 | moment | moment | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 untied | nsubj |
| 3 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 4 backs | nmod:poss |
| 4 | backs | back | NOUN | Number=Plur | 6 turned | nsubj |
| 5 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 turned | aux:pass |
| 6 | turned | turn | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 2 moment | acl:relcl |
| 7 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 8 stone | det |
| 8 | stone | stone | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 untied | nsubj |
| 9 | untied | untie | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 10 | itself | itself | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes | 9 untied | obj |
| 11 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 9 untied | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | turn | past · passive | soldiers's backs | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V NP.theme»: subject=Theme | |||||
| 2 | untie | past | the moment | stone | vn disassemble-23.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent itself=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/pg540/42/86/