The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 11, sentence 3

The birds would build their nests in my branches, and when the wind blew I would bow to it politely just like the others!’

Who acts: birds, wind, I · What happens: build, blow, bow · To what, where: nests, branches, wind

This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 11. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (birds, wind, I), 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 birds	det
2	birds	bird	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 build	nsubj
3	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	4 build	aux
4	build	build	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
5	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	6 nests	nmod:poss
6	nests	nest	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 build	obj
7	in	in	ADP	_	9 branches	case
8	my	my	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Sing Person=1 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	9 branches	nmod:poss
9	branches	branch	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 build	obl
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	18 bow	punct
11	and	and	CCONJ	_	18 bow	cc
12	when	when	ADV	PronType=Int	15 blew	advmod
13	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	14 wind	det
14	wind	wind	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 blew	nsubj
15	blew	blow	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	18 bow	advcl
16	I	I	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	18 bow	nsubj
17	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	18 bow	aux
18	bow	bow	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	4 build	conj
19	to	to	ADP	_	20 it	case
20	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	18 bow	obl
21	politely	politely	ADV	_	18 bow	advmod
22	just	just	ADV	_	25 others	advmod
23	like	like	ADP	_	25 others	case
24	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	25 others	det
25	others	other	NOUN	Number=Plur	18 bow	obl
26	!	!	PUNCT	_	4 build	punct
27	’	'	PUNCT	_	4 build	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	other	roles by
1	build	would	the birds	birds's nests		my branches		vn build-26.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nest=Product
2	blow	past	the wind					vn split-23.2 «NP V apart»: agent=Patient
3	bow	would	I		wind		like the others; politely property	vn acquiesce-95.1-1 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent to it=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 Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (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/pg5615/11/3/