The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Wedding Feast, sentence 15
Six fathoms long were his horns; and his back was a highway where squirrels frisked and birds built their nests as in the branches of a tree.
Who acts: Six fathoms, back, squirrels, birds · What happens: be, frisk, build · To what, where: horns, highway, nests
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Wedding Feast. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Six fathoms, back, squirrels, birds), 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 | Six | six | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 2 fathoms | nummod |
| 2 | fathoms | fathom | NOUN | Number=Plur | 6 horns | nsubj |
| 3 | long | long | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 2 fathoms | amod |
| 4 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 horns | cop |
| 5 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 6 horns | nmod:poss |
| 6 | horns | horn | NOUN | Number=Plur | root | root |
| 7 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 13 highway | punct |
| 8 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 13 highway | cc |
| 9 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 10 back | nmod:poss |
| 10 | back | back | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 highway | nsubj |
| 11 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 13 highway | cop |
| 12 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 13 highway | det |
| 13 | highway | highway | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 horns | conj |
| 14 | where | where | ADV | PronType=Rel | 16 frisked | advmod |
| 15 | squirrels | squirrel | NOUN | Number=Plur | 16 frisked | nsubj |
| 16 | frisked | frisk | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 13 highway | acl:relcl |
| 17 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 19 built | cc |
| 18 | birds | bird | NOUN | Number=Plur | 19 built | nsubj |
| 19 | built | build | VERB | Mood=Ind Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 16 frisked | conj |
| 20 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 21 nests | nmod:poss |
| 21 | nests | nest | NOUN | Number=Plur | 19 built | obj |
| 22 | as | as | ADP | _ | 25 branches | case |
| 23 | in | in | ADP | _ | 25 branches | case |
| 24 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 25 branches | det |
| 25 | branches | branch | NOUN | Number=Plur | 19 built | obl |
| 26 | of | of | ADP | _ | 28 tree | case |
| 27 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 28 tree | det |
| 28 | tree | tree | NOUN | Number=Sing | 25 branches | nmod |
| 29 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 6 horns | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a | past | Six fathoms | bull's horns and a highway | bull nmod:poss | tree rules | |||
| 2 | is a | past | bull's back | a highway | tree rules | ||||
| 3 | frisk | past | squirrels | vn investigate-35.4 «NP V NP.location»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 4 | build | past | birds | birds's nests | as the branches of a tree | vn build-26.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nest=Product |
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/pg66819/27/15/