The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Triumph of Music, sentence 69
Soft-furred ermines, minks, otters, and seals laid themselves down in the grass before him.
Who acts: Soft furred ermines · What happens: fur, lay down · To what, where: seals, grass
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Triumph of Music. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Soft furred ermines), 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 | Soft | soft | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 4 ermines | amod |
| 2 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 1 Soft | punct |
| 3 | furred | fur | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 4 ermines | amod |
| 4 | ermines | ermine | NOUN | Number=Plur | 12 laid | nsubj |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 6 minks | punct |
| 6 | minks | mink | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 ermines | conj |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 8 otters | punct |
| 8 | otters | otter | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 ermines | conj |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 12 laid | punct |
| 10 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 12 laid | cc |
| 11 | seals | seal | NOUN | Number=Plur | 12 laid | nsubj |
| 12 | laid | lay | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 13 | themselves | themselves | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes | 12 laid | obj |
| 14 | down | down | ADP | _ | 12 laid | compound:prt |
| 15 | in | in | ADP | _ | 17 grass | case |
| 16 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 17 grass | det |
| 17 | grass | grass | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 laid | obl |
| 18 | before | before | ADP | _ | 19 him | case |
| 19 | him | he | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 12 laid | obl |
| 20 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 12 laid | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | fur | participle | tree rules | ||||||
| 2 | lay down | past | Soft furred ermines and minks and otters | seals = seal | the grass | before squirrel | vn put_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent themselves=Theme in grass=Destination |
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/pg66819/35/69/