English Fairy Tales, The Magpie's Nest, sentence 1

Once upon a time when pigs spoke rhyme And monkeys chewed tobacco, And hens took snuff to make them tough, And ducks went quack, quack, quack, O!

Who acts: pigs, monkeys, hens, ducks · What happens: speak, chew, take, make, go · To what, where: rhyme, tobacco, snuff, hens, quack · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Magpie's Nest. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (pigs, monkeys, hens, ducks), 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	Once	once	ADV	NumForm=Word NumType=Mult	7 spoke	advmod
2	upon	upon	ADP	_	4 time	case
3	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	4 time	det
4	time	time	NOUN	Number=Sing	1 Once	obl
5	when	when	ADV	PronType=Int	7 spoke	advmod
6	pigs	pig	NOUN	Number=Plur	7 spoke	nsubj
7	spoke	speak	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
8	rhyme	rhyme	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 spoke	obj
9	And	and	CCONJ	_	10 monkeys	cc
10	monkeys	monkey	NOUN	Number=Plur	8 rhyme	conj
11	chewed	chew	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	10 monkeys	acl
12	tobacco	tobacco	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 chewed	obj
13	,	,	PUNCT	_	16 took	punct
14	And	and	CCONJ	_	16 took	cc
15	hens	hen	NOUN	Number=Plur	16 took	nsubj
16	took	take	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	7 spoke	conj
17	snuff	snuff	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 took	obj
18	to	to	PART	_	19 make	mark
19	make	make	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	16 took	advcl
20	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	19 make	obj
21	tough	tough	ADJ	Degree=Pos	19 make	xcomp
22	,	,	PUNCT	_	25 went	punct
23	And	and	CCONJ	_	25 went	cc
24	ducks	duck	NOUN	Number=Plur	25 went	nsubj
25	went	go	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	7 spoke	conj
26	quack	quack	NOUN	Number=Sing	25 went	obj
27	,	,	PUNCT	_	28 quack	punct
28	quack	quack	NOUN	Number=Sing	26 quack	conj
29	,	,	PUNCT	_	30 quack	punct
30	quack	quack	NOUN	Number=Sing	26 quack	conj
31	,	,	PUNCT	_	32 O	punct
32	O	o	INTJ	_	25 went	discourse
33	!	!	PUNCT	_	7 spoke	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	speak speech: other	past	pigs	rhyme and monkeys	once property	tree rules
2	chew	participle	monkeys not said here	tobacco		vn chew-39.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tobacco=Patient
3	take	past	hens	snuff		vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent snuff=Theme
4	make	to-infinitive	hens not said here	hens = hen	tough property	vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset they=Product
5	go	past	ducks	quack and quack and quack		vn meander-47.7 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location quack=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: «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7439 (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/pg7439/42/1/