The Violet Fairy Book, The Young Man Who Would Have His Eyes Opened, sentence 26

Thousands of heads were reared, and tongues were stretched out to sting the intruder to death, but happily for him their bodies were so closely entwined one in the other that they could not disentangle themselves quickly.

Who acts: Thousands · What happens: rear, stretch out, sting, entwine, not disentangle · To what, where: Thousands, tongues, intruder, noise

This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Young Man Who Would Have His Eyes Opened. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Thousands), 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	Thousands	thousand	NOUN	Number=Plur	5 reared	nsubj:pass
2	of	of	ADP	_	3 heads	case
3	heads	head	NOUN	Number=Plur	1 Thousands	nmod
4	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 reared	aux:pass
5	reared	rear	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	root	root
6	,	,	PUNCT	_	10 stretched	punct
7	and	and	CCONJ	_	10 stretched	cc
8	tongues	tongue	NOUN	Number=Plur	10 stretched	nsubj:pass
9	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	10 stretched	aux:pass
10	stretched	stretch	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	5 reared	conj
11	out	out	ADP	_	10 stretched	compound:prt
12	to	to	PART	_	13 sting	mark
13	sting	sting	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	10 stretched	advcl
14	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	15 intruder	det
15	intruder	intruder	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 sting	obj
16	to	to	ADP	_	17 death	case
17	death	death	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 sting	obl
18	,	,	PUNCT	_	28 entwined	punct
19	but	but	CCONJ	_	28 entwined	cc
20	happily	happily	ADV	_	28 entwined	advmod
21	for	for	SCONJ	_	28 entwined	mark
22	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	28 entwined	nsubj:pass
23	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	24 bodies	nmod:poss
24	bodies	body	NOUN	Number=Plur	22 him	conj
25	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	28 entwined	aux
26	so	so	ADV	_	28 entwined	advmod
27	closely	closely	ADV	_	28 entwined	advmod
28	entwined	entwine	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	5 reared	conj
29	one	one	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	28 entwined	obj
30	in	in	ADP	_	32 other	case
31	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	32 other	det
32	other	other	ADJ	Degree=Pos	29 one	parataxis
33	that	that	SCONJ	_	37 disentangle	mark
34	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	37 disentangle	nsubj
35	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	37 disentangle	aux
36	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	37 disentangle	advmod
37	disentangle	disentangle	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	32 other	csubj
38	themselves	themselves	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes	37 disentangle	obj
39	quickly	quickly	ADV	_	37 disentangle	advmod
40	.	.	PUNCT	_	5 reared	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	rear	past · passive		Thousands of heads		vn rear-26.2.2 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient
2	stretch out	past · passive		tongues		vn bend-45.2 «NP V NP.patient»: subject=Patient
3	sting	to-infinitive		the intruder	to death	vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Stimulus intruder=Experiencer
4	entwine	past · passive		noise	closely, happily property	tree rules
5	not disentangle	could	Thousands = thousand	Thousands = thousand	quickly property	vn separate-23.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent themselves=Patient

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/pg641/34/26/