The Red Fairy Book, The Nettle Spinner, sentence 99

Scarcely had they been torn from the soil when they sowed themselves afresh, and grew as you were looking at them.

Who acts: Scarcely, nettles, you · What happens: have, tear, sow, grow, look · To what, where: nettles

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 (Scarcely, nettles, you), 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	Scarcely	Scarcely	PROPN	Number=Sing	2 had	nsubj
2	had	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	5 torn	nsubj
4	been	be	AUX	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	5 torn	aux:pass
5	torn	tear	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	2 had	xcomp
6	from	from	ADP	_	8 soil	case
7	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	8 soil	det
8	soil	soil	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 torn	obl
9	when	when	ADV	PronType=Int	11 sowed	advmod
10	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	11 sowed	nsubj
11	sowed	sow	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 torn	advcl
12	themselves	themselves	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes	11 sowed	obj
13	afresh	afresh	ADJ	Degree=Pos	11 sowed	xcomp
14	,	,	PUNCT	_	16 grew	punct
15	and	and	CCONJ	_	16 grew	cc
16	grew	grow	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 had	conj
17	as	as	SCONJ	_	20 looking	mark
18	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	20 looking	nsubj
19	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	20 looking	aux
20	looking	look	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	16 grew	advcl
21	at	at	ADP	_	22 them	case
22	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	20 looking	obl
23	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 had	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	have	past	Scarcely			tree rules
2	tear	participle · passive		nettles = nettle	from the soil	vn split-23.2 «NP V NP PP.co-patient»: subject=Patient from soil=Co-Patient
3	sow	past	nettles = nettle	nettles = nettle	afresh property	vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent themselves=Theme
4	grow	past	Scarcely not said here			vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
5	look	past · progressive	you		at nettles = nettle	vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at they=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/pg540/42/99/