The Red Fairy Book, The Master Thief, sentence 197

They were driving their spurs into the partition till the splinters flew about, and some of the boys fell off, and some still hung on and sat looking like fools.

Who acts: thieves, splinters, some · What happens: drive, fly, fall off, hang on, sit, look · To what, where: spurs, partition, some

This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master Thief. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (thieves, splinters, some), 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	3 driving	nsubj
2	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 driving	aux
3	driving	drive	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	root	root
4	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	5 spurs	nmod:poss
5	spurs	spur	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 driving	obj
6	into	into	ADP	_	8 partition	case
7	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	8 partition	det
8	partition	partition	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 driving	obl
9	till	till	SCONJ	_	12 flew	mark
10	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	11 splinters	det
11	splinters	splinter	NOUN	Number=Plur	12 flew	nsubj
12	flew	fly	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 driving	advcl
13	about	about	ADV	_	12 flew	advmod
14	,	,	PUNCT	_	20 fell	punct
15	and	and	CCONJ	_	20 fell	cc
16	some	some	DET	PronType=Ind	20 fell	nsubj
17	of	of	ADP	_	19 boys	case
18	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	19 boys	det
19	boys	boy	NOUN	Number=Plur	16 some	nmod
20	fell	fall	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	12 flew	conj
21	off	off	ADP	_	20 fell	compound:prt
22	,	,	PUNCT	_	26 hung	punct
23	and	and	CCONJ	_	26 hung	cc
24	some	some	DET	PronType=Ind	26 hung	nsubj:pass
25	still	still	ADV	_	26 hung	advmod
26	hung	hang	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	20 fell	parataxis
27	on	on	ADP	_	26 hung	compound:prt
28	and	and	CCONJ	_	29 sat	cc
29	sat	sit	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	26 hung	conj
30	looking	look	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	29 sat	advcl
31	like	like	ADP	_	32 fools	case
32	fools	fool	NOUN	Number=Plur	30 looking	obl
33	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 driving	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	drive	past · progressive	thieves = thief	thieves's spurs	the partition			vn nonvehicle-51.4.2-1 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent spur=Theme into partition=Trajectory
2	fly	past	the splinters				about property	vn spatial_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
3	fall off	past	some					vn calibratable_cos-45.6.1-1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute
4	hang on	participle · passive		some		still		vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient
5	sit	past						vn assuming_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent
6	look	gerund					like fools	vn stimulus_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus
7	spur		thieves = thief					nom spur «communication transitive»: poss=agent

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/pg540/9/197/