The Green Fairy Book, The White Snake, sentence 16

Here were a number of ducks resting near a little stream, and pluming, themselves with their bills, whilst they kept up an animated conversation amongst themselves.

Who acts: number, ducks, bills · What happens: be, rest, plume, keep up, bill · To what, where: little stream, ducks, animated conversation

This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The White Snake. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (number, ducks, bills), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher. This tree is Mova's own parse (the en model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

The tree

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	Here	here	ADV	PronType=Dem	root	root
2	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	1 Here	cop
3	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	4 number	det
4	number	number	NOUN	Number=Sing	1 Here	nsubj
5	of	of	ADP	_	6 ducks	case
6	ducks	duck	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 number	nmod
7	resting	rest	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	6 ducks	acl
8	near	near	ADP	_	11 stream	case
9	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	11 stream	det
10	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	11 stream	amod
11	stream	stream	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 resting	obl
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	23 kept	punct
13	and	and	CCONJ	_	23 kept	cc
14	pluming	plume	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	23 kept	csubj
15	,	,	PUNCT	_	14 pluming	punct
16	themselves	themselves	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes	14 pluming	obl
17	with	with	ADP	_	19 bills	case
18	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	19 bills	nmod:poss
19	bills	bill	NOUN	Number=Plur	14 pluming	obl
20	,	,	PUNCT	_	23 kept	punct
21	whilst	whilst	SCONJ	_	23 kept	mark
22	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	23 kept	nsubj
23	kept	keep	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	1 Here	parataxis
24	up	up	ADP	_	23 kept	compound:prt
25	an	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	27 conversation	det
26	animated	animated	ADJ	Degree=Pos	27 conversation	amod
27	conversation	conversation	NOUN	Number=Sing	23 kept	obj
28	amongst	amongst	ADP	_	29 themselves	case
29	themselves	themselves	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes	23 kept	obl
30	.	.	PUNCT	_	1 Here	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	is	past	a number of ducks			here property	tree rules
2	rest	gerund	ducks not said here		a little stream		vn spatial_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme near stream=Location
3	plume	gerund		ducks = duck		with ducks's bills	tree rules
4	keep up	past	bills = bill	a animated conversation		amongst bills = bill	vn sustain-55.6 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent conversation=Theme
5	bill		ducks = duck				nom bill «communication transitive»: poss=agent

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 Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (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/pg7277/50/16/