The Yellow Fairy Book, The Dragon of the North(2), sentence 49

He sat down at the foot of the tree upon which the birds were perched, and listened attentively to what they were saying to each other.

Who acts: length, birds · What happens: sit down, perch, listen, say · To what, where: foot, birds, tree, each · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Dragon of the North(2). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (length, birds), 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	He	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 sat	nsubj
2	sat	sit	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	down	down	ADP	_	2 sat	compound:prt
4	at	at	ADP	_	6 foot	case
5	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	6 foot	det
6	foot	foot	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 sat	obl
7	of	of	ADP	_	9 tree	case
8	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	9 tree	det
9	tree	tree	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 foot	nmod
10	upon	upon	ADP	_	11 which	case
11	which	which	PRON	PronType=Rel	15 perched	obl
12	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 birds	det
13	birds	bird	NOUN	Number=Plur	15 perched	nsubj:pass
14	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	15 perched	aux:pass
15	perched	perch	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	9 tree	acl:relcl
16	,	,	PUNCT	_	18 listened	punct
17	and	and	CCONJ	_	18 listened	cc
18	listened	listen	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 sat	conj
19	attentively	attentively	ADV	_	18 listened	advmod
20	to	to	ADP	_	21 what	case
21	what	what	PRON	PronType=Rel	18 listened	obl
22	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	24 saying	nsubj
23	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	24 saying	aux
24	saying	say	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	21 what	acl:relcl
25	to	to	ADP	_	26 each	case
26	each	each	DET	ExtPos=PRON PronType=Rcp	24 saying	obl
27	other	other	ADJ	Degree=Pos	26 each	fixed
28	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 sat	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	other	roles by
1	sit down	past	length			the foot of the tree		vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent at foot=Location
2	perch	past · passive		the birds		the tree		vn put_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: subject=Theme upon which=Destination
3	listen	past	length not said here				attentively property	vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent to what=Theme
4	say speech: assert	past · progressive	birds = bird		each			vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to each=Recipient

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/pg640/5/49/