The Violet Fairy Book, The Headless Dwarfs, sentence 22
He groped about for some time, till he found the staircase in the tower, and then began to feel his way up the steps.
Who acts: Hans · What happens: grope, find, begin, feel · To what, where: staircase, tower, way
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 (Hans), 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 groped | nsubj |
| 2 | groped | grope | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | about | about | ADV | _ | 2 groped | advmod |
| 4 | for | for | ADP | _ | 6 time | case |
| 5 | some | some | DET | PronType=Ind | 6 time | det |
| 6 | time | time | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 groped | obl |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 10 found | punct |
| 8 | till | till | SCONJ | _ | 10 found | mark |
| 9 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 10 found | nsubj |
| 10 | found | find | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 groped | conj |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 12 staircase | det |
| 12 | staircase | staircase | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 found | obj |
| 13 | in | in | ADP | _ | 15 tower | case |
| 14 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 15 tower | det |
| 15 | tower | tower | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 found | obl |
| 16 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 19 began | punct |
| 17 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 19 began | cc |
| 18 | then | then | ADV | PronType=Dem | 19 began | advmod |
| 19 | began | begin | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 groped | conj |
| 20 | to | to | PART | _ | 21 feel | mark |
| 21 | feel | feel | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 19 began | xcomp |
| 22 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 23 way | nmod:poss |
| 23 | way | way | NOUN | Number=Sing | 21 feel | obj |
| 24 | up | up | ADP | _ | 26 steps | case |
| 25 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 26 steps | det |
| 26 | steps | step | NOUN | Number=Plur | 21 feel | obl |
| 27 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 groped | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | grope | past | Hans | time | about property | vn rummage-35.5-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent | |||
| 2 | find | past | Hans | the staircase | the tower | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent staircase=Topic | |||
| 3 | begin | past | Hans not said here | then | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | ||||
| 4 | feel | to-infinitive | Hans not said here | Hans's way | up the steps | vn hunt-35.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent way=Theme |
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/pg641/33/22/