Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains, A Historical Tale., part 1, sentence 71

Behind came nurse Gretchen in snowy cap and apron, with a lovely babe in her arms, and both parents sprang forward as if each would be the first to seize the child.

Who acts: nurse, parents, each · What happens: come, sprang, be, seize · To what, where: snowy cap, child

This is a sentence of «Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains» by Toofie Lauder, A Historical Tale., part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (nurse, parents, each), 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	Behind	behind	ADP	_	2 came	mark
2	came	come	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	nurse	nurse	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 came	nsubj
4	Gretchen	Gretchen	PROPN	Number=Sing	3 nurse	appos
5	in	in	ADP	_	7 cap	case
6	snowy	snowy	ADJ	Degree=Pos	7 cap	amod
7	cap	cap	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 came	obl
8	and	and	CCONJ	_	9 apron	cc
9	apron	apron	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 cap	conj
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	14 babe	punct
11	with	with	ADP	_	14 babe	case
12	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	14 babe	det
13	lovely	lovely	ADJ	Degree=Pos	14 babe	amod
14	babe	babe	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 came	obl
15	in	in	ADP	_	17 arms	case
16	her	her	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	17 arms	nmod:poss
17	arms	arm	NOUN	Number=Plur	14 babe	nmod
18	,	,	PUNCT	_	22 sprang	punct
19	and	and	CCONJ	_	22 sprang	cc
20	both	both	DET	PronType=Tot	21 parents	det
21	parents	parent	NOUN	Number=Plur	22 sprang	nsubj
22	sprang	sprang	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	2 came	conj
23	forward	forward	ADV	_	22 sprang	advmod
24	as	as	SCONJ	_	30 first	mark
25	if	if	SCONJ	_	30 first	mark
26	each	each	DET	PronType=Tot	30 first	nsubj
27	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	30 first	aux
28	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	30 first	cop
29	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	30 first	det
30	first	first	ADJ	Degree=Pos NumForm=Word NumType=Ord	22 sprang	advcl
31	to	to	PART	_	32 seize	mark
32	seize	seize	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	30 first	advcl
33	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	34 child	det
34	child	child	NOUN	Number=Sing	32 seize	obj
35	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 came	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	come	past	nurse		snowy cap and apron	with a lovely babe in nurse's arms	vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in cap=Location
2	sprang	present	both parents			forward property	tree rules
3	is	would	each			first property	tree rules
4	seize	to-infinitive	each not said here	the child			vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=Theme

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: «Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains» by Toofie Lauder, Project Gutenberg book 74323 (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/pg74323/18/71/

🌲 Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains, A Historical Tale., part 1, sentence 71

The tree

Pragmatics

Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains, A Historical Tale., part 1, sentence 71