The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Wedding Feast, sentence 92
Busy, very busy, were the little waiting-maidens, serving food to all the people.
Who acts: Busy little waiting maidens · What happens: be, serve · To what, where: Busy little waiting maidens, food, people
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 (Busy little waiting maidens), 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 | Busy | busy | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 11 maidens | amod |
| 2 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 4 busy | punct |
| 3 | very | very | ADV | _ | 4 busy | advmod |
| 4 | busy | busy | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 1 Busy | conj |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 1 Busy | punct |
| 6 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 11 maidens | cop |
| 7 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 11 maidens | det |
| 8 | little | little | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 11 maidens | amod |
| 9 | waiting | waiting | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 maidens | compound |
| 10 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 9 waiting | punct |
| 11 | maidens | maiden | NOUN | Number=Plur | root | root |
| 12 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 13 serving | punct |
| 13 | serving | serve | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 11 maidens | acl |
| 14 | food | food | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 serving | obj |
| 15 | to | to | ADP | _ | 18 people | case |
| 16 | all | all | DET | PronType=Tot | 18 people | det:predet |
| 17 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 18 people | det |
| 18 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 13 serving | obl |
| 19 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 11 maidens | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a | past | the Busy little waiting maidens | tree rules | |||||
| 2 | serve | gerund | the Busy little waiting maidens not said here | food | all people | vn fulfilling-13.4.1-1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent food=Theme to people=Recipient |
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/pg66819/27/92/