The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Pursuit, sentence 45
And I see dark specks hovering over it—they must be falcons or nesting ravens flying among the birch trees.”
Who acts: I, dark specks, specks, falcons · What happens: see, hover, be, nest, fly · To what, where: dark specks, patience, falcons, birch trees
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Pursuit. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, dark specks, specks, falcons), 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 | And | and | CCONJ | _ | 3 see | cc |
| 2 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 3 see | nsubj |
| 3 | see | see | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | dark | dark | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 5 specks | amod |
| 5 | specks | speck | NOUN | Number=Plur | 3 see | obj |
| 6 | hovering | hover | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 5 specks | acl |
| 7 | over | over | ADP | _ | 8 it | case |
| 8 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 6 hovering | obl |
| 9 | — | - | PUNCT | _ | 13 falcons | punct |
| 10 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 13 falcons | nsubj |
| 11 | must | must | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 13 falcons | aux |
| 12 | be | be | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 13 falcons | cop |
| 13 | falcons | falcon | NOUN | Number=Plur | 3 see | obl |
| 14 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 16 ravens | cc |
| 15 | nesting | nest | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 16 ravens | amod |
| 16 | ravens | raven | NOUN | Number=Plur | 13 falcons | conj |
| 17 | flying | fly | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 13 falcons | acl |
| 18 | among | among | ADP | _ | 21 trees | case |
| 19 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 21 trees | det |
| 20 | birch | birch | NOUN | Number=Sing | 21 trees | compound |
| 21 | trees | tree | NOUN | Number=Plur | 17 flying | obl |
| 22 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 see | punct |
| 23 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 3 see | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | see | present | I | dark specks | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer speck=Stimulus | ||||
| 2 | hover | gerund | dark specks not said here | patience | vn modes_of_being_with_motion-47.3 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme over it=Location | ||||
| 3 | is a | must | specks = speck | falcons or nesting ravens | nesting ravens conj | tree rules | |||
| 4 | nest | gerund | vn berry-13.7 «NP V»: agent=Agent | ||||||
| 5 | fly | gerund | falcons or nesting ravens not said here | the birch trees | vn spatial_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme among tree=Location |
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/pg66819/37/45/