The Violet Fairy Book, The Headless Dwarfs, sentence 103
Like a swarm of midges, a host of tiny headless creatures seemed to spring straight out of the ground, and every one was armed with a club.
Who acts: host, one · What happens: seem, spring, be · To what, where: ground
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Headless Dwarfs. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (host, one), 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 | Like | like | ADP | _ | 3 swarm | case |
| 2 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 3 swarm | det |
| 3 | swarm | swarm | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 seemed | obl |
| 4 | of | of | ADP | _ | 5 midges | case |
| 5 | midges | midge | NOUN | Number=Plur | 3 swarm | nmod |
| 6 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 3 swarm | punct |
| 7 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 8 host | det |
| 8 | host | host | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 seemed | nsubj |
| 9 | of | of | ADP | _ | 12 creatures | case |
| 10 | tiny | tiny | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 12 creatures | amod |
| 11 | headless | headless | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 12 creatures | amod |
| 12 | creatures | creature | NOUN | Number=Plur | 8 host | nmod |
| 13 | seemed | seem | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 14 | to | to | PART | _ | 15 spring | mark |
| 15 | spring | spring | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 13 seemed | xcomp |
| 16 | straight | straight | ADV | _ | 20 ground | advmod |
| 17 | out | out | ADP | _ | 20 ground | case |
| 18 | of | of | ADP | _ | 20 ground | case |
| 19 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 20 ground | det |
| 20 | ground | ground | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 spring | obl |
| 21 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 26 armed | punct |
| 22 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 26 armed | cc |
| 23 | every | every | DET | PronType=Tot | 24 one | det |
| 24 | one | one | NOUN | Number=Sing | 26 armed | nsubj |
| 25 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 26 armed | cop |
| 26 | armed | armed | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 13 seemed | conj |
| 27 | with | with | ADP | _ | 29 club | case |
| 28 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 29 club | det |
| 29 | club | club | NOUN | Number=Sing | 26 armed | obl |
| 30 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 13 seemed | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | seem | past | a host of tiny headless creatures | like a swarm of midges | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Theme clause=Attribute | ||||
| 2 | spring | to-infinitive | a host of tiny headless creatures not said here | the ground | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme out ground=Trajectory | ||||
| 3 | is | past | every one | with a club; armed property | tree rules |
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/pg641/33/103/