English Fairy Tales, The Magpie's Nest, sentence 12

“The very thing!” said the sparrow, and off he went; so sparrows make rather slovenly nests to this day.

Who acts: thing, sparrows · What happens: say, go, make · To what, where: sparrow, slovenly nests · 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 (thing, sparrows), 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	“	"	PUNCT	_	7 said	punct
2	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	4 thing	det
3	very	very	ADV	_	4 thing	advmod
4	thing	thing	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 said	nsubj
5	!	!	PUNCT	_	4 thing	punct
6	”	"	PUNCT	_	4 thing	punct
7	said	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
8	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	9 sparrow	det
9	sparrow	sparrow	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 said	obj
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	14 went	punct
11	and	and	CCONJ	_	14 went	cc
12	off	off	ADP	_	14 went	mark
13	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 went	nsubj
14	went	go	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	7 said	conj
15	;	;	PUNCT	_	18 make	punct
16	so	so	ADV	_	18 make	advmod
17	sparrows	sparrow	NOUN	Number=Plur	18 make	nsubj
18	make	make	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	7 said	conj
19	rather	rather	ADV	_	20 slovenly	advmod
20	slovenly	slovenly	ADJ	Degree=Pos	21 nests	amod
21	nests	nest	NOUN	Number=Plur	18 make	obj
22	to	to	ADP	_	24 day	case
23	this	this	DET	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	24 day	det
24	day	day	NOUN	Number=Sing	18 make	obl
25	.	.	PUNCT	_	7 said	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	roles by
1	say speech: assert	past	the thing	the sparrow		vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent sparrow=Topic
2	go	past	thing			vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
3	make	present	sparrows	slovenly nests	day	vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset nest=Product

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/pg7439/42/12/