Celtic Fairy Tales, The Battle of the Birds, sentence 17

But the wren broke it with his flail, and there was a pitched battle on a set day.

Who acts: wren · What happens: break, pitch, be · To what, where: leg, pitched battle

This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Battle of the Birds. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wren), 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	But	but	CCONJ	_	4 broke	cc
2	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	3 wren	det
3	wren	wren	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 broke	nsubj
4	broke	break	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
5	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 broke	obj
6	with	with	ADP	_	8 flail	case
7	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	8 flail	nmod:poss
8	flail	flail	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 broke	obl
9	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 battle	punct
10	and	and	CCONJ	_	12 was	cc
11	there	there	PRON	PronType=Dem	12 was	expl
12	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	15 battle	cop
13	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	15 battle	det
14	pitched	pitch	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	15 battle	amod
15	battle	battle	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 broke	obl
16	on	on	ADP	_	19 day	case
17	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	19 day	det
18	set	set	ADJ	Degree=Pos	19 day	amod
19	day	day	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 battle	nmod
20	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 broke	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	break	past	the wren	leg		with wren's flail	vn break-45.1 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent it=Patient with flail=Instrument
2	pitch	participle					vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent
3	is a	past		a pitched battle	day		tree rules

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: «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7885 (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/pg7885/31/17/