The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Unfinished Boat, sentence 133
He slew a whole flock of swans; he killed great numbers of geese; and hundreds of swallows fell, pierced by his unerring weapons.
Who acts: flock, hundreds · What happens: slay, kill, fall, pierce · To what, where: whole flock, great numbers
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Unfinished Boat. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (flock, hundreds), 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 | He | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 2 slew | nsubj |
| 2 | slew | slay | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 5 flock | det |
| 4 | whole | whole | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 5 flock | amod |
| 5 | flock | flock | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 slew | obj |
| 6 | of | of | ADP | _ | 7 swans | case |
| 7 | swans | swan | NOUN | Number=Plur | 5 flock | nmod |
| 8 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 10 killed | punct |
| 9 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 10 killed | nsubj |
| 10 | killed | kill | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 slew | conj |
| 11 | great | great | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 12 numbers | amod |
| 12 | numbers | number | NOUN | Number=Plur | 10 killed | obj |
| 13 | of | of | ADP | _ | 14 geese | case |
| 14 | geese | goose | NOUN | Number=Plur | 12 numbers | nmod |
| 15 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 20 fell | punct |
| 16 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 20 fell | cc |
| 17 | hundreds | hundred | NOUN | Number=Plur | 20 fell | nsubj |
| 18 | of | of | ADP | _ | 19 swallows | case |
| 19 | swallows | swallow | NOUN | Number=Plur | 17 hundreds | nmod |
| 20 | fell | fall | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 slew | parataxis |
| 21 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 22 pierced | punct |
| 22 | pierced | pierce | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 20 fell | conj |
| 23 | by | by | ADP | _ | 26 weapons | case |
| 24 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 26 weapons | nmod:poss |
| 25 | unerring | unerring | NOUN | Number=Sing | 26 weapons | compound |
| 26 | weapons | weapon | NOUN | Number=Plur | 22 pierced | obl |
| 27 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 slew | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | slay | past | flock | a whole flock of swans | vn murder-42.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent flock=Patient | ||||
| 2 | kill | past | flock | great numbers of geese | vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent number=Theme | ||||
| 3 | fall | past | hundreds of swallows | vn occur-48.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||||
| 4 | pierce | participle | hundreds of swallows not said here | by flock's unerring weapons | vn poke-19-1 «NP V NP»: agent=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 Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 66819 (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/pg66819/13/133/