The Yellow Fairy Book, The Grateful Beasts(11), part 4, sentence 73
He was hesitating which to choose, when he suddenly beheld two people coming towards him, down the track which lay most to his right.
Who acts: Prince, two people, track · What happens: hesitate, choose, behold, come, lie · To what, where: two people, track
This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Beasts(11), part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Prince, two people, track), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.
Checked tree. This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (gutenberg:pg640:1211): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.
The tree
The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)
| # | word | lemma | UPOS | features | head | relation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | He | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 3 hesitating | nsubj |
| 2 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 3 hesitating | aux |
| 3 | hesitating | hesitate | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | root | root |
| 4 | which | which | PRON | PronType=Int | 6 choose | obj |
| 5 | to | to | PART | _ | 6 choose | mark |
| 6 | choose | choose | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 3 hesitating | ccomp |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 11 beheld | punct |
| 8 | when | when | ADV | PronType=Int | 11 beheld | advmod |
| 9 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 11 beheld | nsubj |
| 10 | suddenly | suddenly | ADV | _ | 11 beheld | advmod |
| 11 | beheld | behold | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 3 hesitating | advcl |
| 12 | two | two | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 13 people | nummod |
| 13 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 11 beheld | obj |
| 14 | coming | come | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 13 people | acl |
| 15 | towards | towards | ADP | _ | 16 him | case |
| 16 | him | he | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 14 coming | obl |
| 17 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 20 track | punct |
| 18 | down | down | ADP | _ | 20 track | case |
| 19 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 20 track | det |
| 20 | track | track | NOUN | Number=Sing | 14 coming | obl |
| 21 | which | which | PRON | PronType=Rel | 22 lay | nsubj |
| 22 | lay | lie | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 20 track | acl:relcl |
| 23 | most | most | ADV | Degree=Sup | 26 right | advmod |
| 24 | to | to | ADP | _ | 26 right | case |
| 25 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 26 right | nmod:poss |
| 26 | right | right | NOUN | Number=Sing | 22 lay | obl |
| 27 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 hesitating | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | hesitate | past · progressive | Prince | tree rules | |||||
| 2 | choose | to-infinitive | Prince not said here | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent which=Theme | |||||
| 3 | behold | past | Prince | two people | suddenly property | vn sight-30.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer people=Stimulus | |||
| 4 | come | gerund | two people not said here | the track | towards Prince | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial_location PP.destination»: agent=Theme towards he=Initial_Location down track=Destination | |||
| 5 | lie | past | the track | to Prince's right | vn assuming_position-50 «NP V»: agent=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 Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (public domain in the USA). Tree: the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/17/73/