The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, Mistress and Minstrel, sentence 168
Merrily did the birchwood runners whistle as they glided over the half-frozen earth.
Who acts: birchwood runners, runners · What happens: whistle, glide, freeze · To what, where: frozen earth
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, Mistress and Minstrel. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (birchwood runners, runners), 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 | Merrily | merrily | ADV | _ | 6 whistle | advmod |
| 2 | did | do | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 whistle | aux |
| 3 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 5 runners | det |
| 4 | birchwood | birchwood | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 runners | compound |
| 5 | runners | runner | NOUN | Number=Plur | 6 whistle | nsubj |
| 6 | whistle | whistle | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 7 | as | as | SCONJ | _ | 9 glided | mark |
| 8 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 9 glided | nsubj |
| 9 | glided | glide | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 whistle | ccomp |
| 10 | over | over | ADP | _ | 15 earth | case |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 15 earth | det |
| 12 | half | half | NOUN | Number=Sing NumForm=Word NumType=Frac | 14 frozen | compound |
| 13 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 12 half | punct |
| 14 | frozen | freeze | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 15 earth | amod |
| 15 | earth | earth | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 glided | obl |
| 16 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 6 whistle | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | whistle | past · do-support | the birchwood runners | merrily property | vn manner_speaking-37.3 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | ||||
| 2 | glide | past | runners = runner | the frozen earth | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme over earth=Trajectory | ||||
| 3 | freeze | participle | half compound | vn other_cos-45.4-1 «NP.patient V»: agent=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 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/pg66819/2/168/