The Violet Fairy Book, The Violet Fairy Book, sentence 17

But originally the characters were just ‘a man,’ and ‘a woman,’ and ‘a boy,’ and ‘a girl,’ with crowds of beasts, birds, and fishes, all behaving like human beings.

Who acts: characters, all · What happens: be, behave · To what, where: man

This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Violet Fairy Book. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (characters, all), 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	But	but	CCONJ	_	9 man	cc
2	originally	originally	ADV	_	9 man	advmod
3	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	4 characters	det
4	characters	character	NOUN	Number=Plur	9 man	nsubj
5	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	9 man	cop
6	just	just	ADV	_	9 man	advmod
7	‘	'	PUNCT	_	9 man	punct
8	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	9 man	det
9	man	man	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	9 man	punct
11	’	'	PUNCT	_	9 man	punct
12	and	and	CCONJ	_	15 woman	cc
13	‘	'	PUNCT	_	15 woman	punct
14	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	15 woman	det
15	woman	woman	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 man	conj
16	,	,	PUNCT	_	9 man	punct
17	’	'	PUNCT	_	9 man	punct
18	and	and	CCONJ	_	21 boy	cc
19	‘	'	PUNCT	_	21 boy	punct
20	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	21 boy	det
21	boy	boy	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 man	conj
22	,	,	PUNCT	_	9 man	punct
23	’	'	PUNCT	_	9 man	punct
24	and	and	CCONJ	_	27 girl	cc
25	‘	'	PUNCT	_	27 girl	punct
26	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	27 girl	det
27	girl	girl	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 man	conj
28	,	,	PUNCT	_	9 man	punct
29	’	'	PUNCT	_	9 man	punct
30	with	with	ADP	_	31 crowds	case
31	crowds	crowd	NOUN	Number=Plur	9 man	nmod
32	of	of	ADP	_	33 beasts	case
33	beasts	beast	NOUN	Number=Plur	31 crowds	nmod
34	,	,	PUNCT	_	35 birds	punct
35	birds	bird	NOUN	Number=Plur	33 beasts	conj
36	,	,	PUNCT	_	38 fishes	punct
37	and	and	CCONJ	_	38 fishes	cc
38	fishes	fish	NOUN	Number=Plur	33 beasts	conj
39	,	,	PUNCT	_	41 behaving	punct
40	all	all	DET	PronType=Tot	41 behaving	nsubj
41	behaving	behave	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	9 man	conj
42	like	like	ADP	_	44 beings	case
43	human	human	ADJ	Degree=Pos	44 beings	amod
44	beings	being	NOUN	Number=Plur	41 behaving	obl
45	.	.	PUNCT	_	9 man	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	is a	past	the characters	a man and a woman and a boy and a girl				with crowds of beasts and birds and fishes; originally property	tree rules
2	behave	gerund	all					like human beings	vn masquerade-29.6-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Agent like being=Attribute

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 Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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/pg641/1/17/