The Violet Fairy Book, The Fairy of the Dawn, part 1, sentence 111
A desert lay spread out before him, whose aspect made his hair stand on end.
Who acts: aspect · What happens: spread out, make · To what, where: desert, hair stand, end
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Fairy of the Dawn, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (aspect), 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 | A | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 2 desert | det |
| 2 | desert | desert | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 spread | nsubj:pass |
| 3 | lay | lay | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 4 spread | aux:pass |
| 4 | spread | spread | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | root | root |
| 5 | out | out | ADP | _ | 4 spread | compound:prt |
| 6 | before | before | ADP | _ | 7 him | case |
| 7 | him | he | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 4 spread | obl |
| 8 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 11 made | punct |
| 9 | whose | whose | PRON | Poss=Yes PronType=Rel | 10 aspect | nmod:poss |
| 10 | aspect | aspect | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 made | nsubj |
| 11 | made | make | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 spread | parataxis |
| 12 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 14 stand | nmod:poss |
| 13 | hair | hair | NOUN | Number=Sing | 14 stand | compound |
| 14 | stand | stand | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 made | obj |
| 15 | on | on | ADP | _ | 16 end | case |
| 16 | end | end | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 made | obl |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 spread | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | spread out | present · passive | a desert | before dragon | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: subject=Theme before he=Destination | ||||
| 2 | make | past | aspect | dragon's hair stand | on end | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset stand=Product |
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/pg641/19/111/