Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Middle-English Arthurian Romance Retold in Modern Prose, Opening, part 2, sentence 27
Therefore were the gallant knights slow to answer, and gazed astounded, and sat stone still in a deep silence through that goodly hall, as if a slumber were fallen upon them.
Who acts: gallant knights · What happens: be, slow, answer, gaze, astound, sit · To what, where: gallant knights, stone, deep silence, slumber
This is a sentence of «Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Middle-English Arthurian Romance Retold in Modern Prose» by Jessie L. Weston, Opening, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (gallant knights), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.
Mova's own parse. This tree may be wrong.
The tree
The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)
| # | word | lemma | UPOS | features | head | relation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Therefore | therefore | ADV | _ | 5 knights | advmod |
| 2 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 knights | cop |
| 3 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 5 knights | det |
| 4 | gallant | gallant | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 5 knights | amod |
| 5 | knights | knight | NOUN | Number=Plur | 6 slow | nsubj |
| 6 | slow | slow | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 7 | to | to | PART | _ | 8 answer | mark |
| 8 | answer | answer | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 6 slow | xcomp |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 11 gazed | punct |
| 10 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 11 gazed | cc |
| 11 | gazed | gaze | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 slow | conj |
| 12 | astounded | astound | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 11 gazed | xcomp |
| 13 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 15 sat | punct |
| 14 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 15 sat | cc |
| 15 | sat | sit | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 11 gazed | parataxis |
| 16 | stone | stone | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 sat | obj |
| 17 | still | still | ADV | _ | 15 sat | advmod |
| 18 | in | in | ADP | _ | 21 silence | case |
| 19 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 21 silence | det |
| 20 | deep | deep | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 21 silence | amod |
| 21 | silence | silence | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 sat | obl |
| 22 | through | through | ADP | _ | 25 hall | case |
| 23 | that | that | DET | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 25 hall | det |
| 24 | goodly | goodly | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 25 hall | amod |
| 25 | hall | hall | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 sat | obl |
| 26 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 32 fallen | punct |
| 27 | as | as | SCONJ | _ | 32 fallen | mark |
| 28 | if | if | SCONJ | _ | 32 fallen | mark |
| 29 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 30 slumber | det |
| 30 | slumber | slumber | NOUN | Number=Sing | 32 fallen | nsubj |
| 31 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 32 fallen | aux:pass |
| 32 | fallen | fall | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 15 sat | conj |
| 33 | upon | upon | ADP | _ | 34 them | case |
| 34 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 32 fallen | obl |
| 35 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 6 slow | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a | past | the gallant knights | therefore property | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | slow | present | the gallant knights | tree rules | |||||
| 3 | answer speech: assert | to-infinitive | the gallant knights not said here | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 4 | gaze | past | the gallant knights not said here | tree rules | |||||
| 5 | astound | participle | the gallant knights not said here | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer | |||||
| 6 | sit | past | stone | a deep silence | still | through that goodly hall | vn spatial_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V NP.theme PP»: agent=Agent stone=Theme in silence=Location | ||
| 7 | fall a condition, not said to happen | past · passive | a slumber | upon stones = stone | vn become-109.1-1 «NP V ADJ»: subject=Result |
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: «Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Middle-English Arthurian Romance Retold in Modern Prose» by Jessie L. Weston, Project Gutenberg book 66084 (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/pg66084/2/27/