The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Home Coming, sentence 27
The magic sledge scarcely touched the ground, its birchwood runners seemed to skim through the air, so rapid was its motion.
Who acts: magic sledge, birchwood runners, rapid · What happens: touch, seem, skim, be · To what, where: ground, air, motion
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Home Coming. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (magic sledge, birchwood runners, rapid), 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 | The | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 3 sledge | det |
| 2 | magic | magic | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 sledge | amod |
| 3 | sledge | sledge | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 touched | nsubj |
| 4 | scarcely | scarcely | ADV | _ | 5 touched | advmod |
| 5 | touched | touch | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 6 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 7 ground | det |
| 7 | ground | ground | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 touched | obj |
| 8 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 12 seemed | punct |
| 9 | its | its | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 11 runners | nmod:poss |
| 10 | birchwood | birchwood | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 runners | compound |
| 11 | runners | runner | NOUN | Number=Plur | 12 seemed | nsubj |
| 12 | seemed | seem | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 touched | conj |
| 13 | to | to | PART | _ | 14 skim | mark |
| 14 | skim | skim | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 12 seemed | xcomp |
| 15 | through | through | ADP | _ | 17 air | case |
| 16 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 17 air | det |
| 17 | air | air | NOUN | Number=Sing | 14 skim | obl |
| 18 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 23 motion | punct |
| 19 | so | so | ADV | _ | 23 motion | advmod |
| 20 | rapid | rapid | NOUN | Number=Sing | 23 motion | nsubj |
| 21 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 23 motion | cop |
| 22 | its | its | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 23 motion | nmod:poss |
| 23 | motion | motion | NOUN | Number=Sing | 14 skim | obl |
| 24 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 touched | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | touch | past | the magic sledge | the ground | scarcely property | vn contiguous_location-47.8-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme ground=Co-Theme | |||
| 2 | seem | past | sledge's birchwood runners | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Theme clause=Attribute | |||||
| 3 | skim | to-infinitive | sledge's birchwood runners not said here | the air | vn wipe_manner-10.4.1 «NP V NP.source»: agent=Agent | ||||
| 4 | is a | past | rapid | sledge's motion | sledge nmod:poss | tree rules |
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/pg66819/28/27/