The Yellow Fairy Book, The Witch (28), sentence 35

And as she was trying to comfort him they heard a rustling of wings, and a flight of wrens alighted on the ground beside them.

Who acts: girl, mice · What happens: try, comfort, hear, alight, rustle · To what, where: peasant, rustling, wrens, ground, wings

This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Witch (28). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (girl, mice), 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	And	and	CCONJ	_	10 heard	cc
2	as	as	SCONJ	_	5 trying	mark
3	she	she	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	5 trying	nsubj
4	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 trying	aux
5	trying	try	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	10 heard	advcl
6	to	to	PART	_	7 comfort	mark
7	comfort	comfort	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	5 trying	xcomp
8	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	7 comfort	obj
9	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	10 heard	nsubj
10	heard	hear	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
11	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	12 rustling	det
12	rustling	rustling	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 heard	obj
13	of	of	ADP	_	14 wings	case
14	wings	wing	NOUN	Number=Plur	12 rustling	nmod
15	,	,	PUNCT	_	18 flight	punct
16	and	and	CCONJ	_	18 flight	cc
17	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	18 flight	det
18	flight	flight	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 heard	conj
19	of	of	ADP	_	20 wrens	case
20	wrens	wren	NOUN	Number=Plur	18 flight	nmod
21	alighted	alight	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	20 wrens	acl
22	on	on	ADP	_	24 ground	case
23	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	24 ground	det
24	ground	ground	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 alighted	obl
25	beside	beside	ADP	_	26 them	case
26	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	24 ground	nmod
27	.	.	PUNCT	_	10 heard	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	roles by
1	try	past · progressive	girl			vn try-61.1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality
2	comfort not said to happen	to-infinitive	girl not said here	peasant		vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Stimulus he=Experiencer
3	hear	past	mice = mouse	a rustling of wings		vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer rustling=Stimulus
4	alight	participle		wrens not said here	the ground beside mice	tree rules
5	rustle			wings		nom rustling «act transitive»: of=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 Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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/pg640/39/35/