The Violet Fairy Book, The Young Man Who Would Have His Eyes Opened, sentence 40

These were the wood-nymphs, daughters of the earth-mother, who came every night to hold their dances, in the forest.

Who acts: These, earth mother, daughters · What happens: be, come, hold, dance · To what, where: wood nymphs, dances, forest

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 (These, earth mother, daughters), 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	These	this	PRON	Number=Plur PronType=Dem	6 nymphs	nsubj
2	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	6 nymphs	cop
3	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	6 nymphs	det
4	wood	wood	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 nymphs	compound
5	-	-	PUNCT	_	4 wood	punct
6	nymphs	nymph	NOUN	Number=Plur	root	root
7	,	,	PUNCT	_	8 daughters	punct
8	daughters	daughter	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 nymphs	conj
9	of	of	ADP	_	13 mother	case
10	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 mother	det
11	earth	earth	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 mother	compound
12	-	-	PUNCT	_	11 earth	punct
13	mother	mother	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 daughters	nmod
14	,	,	PUNCT	_	16 came	punct
15	who	who	PRON	PronType=Rel	16 came	nsubj
16	came	come	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	13 mother	acl:relcl
17	every	every	DET	PronType=Tot	18 night	det
18	night	night	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 came	obl:unmarked
19	to	to	PART	_	20 hold	mark
20	hold	hold	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	16 came	advcl
21	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	22 dances	nmod:poss
22	dances	dance	NOUN	Number=Plur	20 hold	obj
23	,	,	PUNCT	_	26 forest	punct
24	in	in	ADP	_	26 forest	case
25	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	26 forest	det
26	forest	forest	NOUN	Number=Sing	20 hold	obl
27	.	.	PUNCT	_	6 nymphs	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	when	roles by
1	is a	past	These	the wood nymphs and daughters of the earth mother			tree rules
2	come	past	the earth mother			night	vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
3	hold	to-infinitive	the earth mother not said here	daughters's dances	the forest		vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent dance=Theme in forest=Location
4	dance		daughters = daughter				nom dance «communication transitive»: poss=agent

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/pg641/34/40/