Celtic Fairy Tales, The Battle of the Birds, sentence 28
And if she asks you, Were you at the battle of the birds? say you were.
Who acts: blow, you · What happens: ask, say, be, battle · To what, where: you, birds · Speech: someone speaks here
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 (blow, you), 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 | And | and | CCONJ | _ | 16 say | cc |
| 2 | if | if | SCONJ | _ | 4 asks | mark |
| 3 | she | she | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 4 asks | nsubj |
| 4 | asks | ask | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 16 say | advcl |
| 5 | you | you | PRON | Case=Acc Person=2 PronType=Prs | 4 asks | obj |
| 6 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 8 you | punct |
| 7 | Were | Were | PROPN | Number=Sing | 8 you | nsubj |
| 8 | you | you | PRON | Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs | 4 asks | obl |
| 9 | at | at | ADP | _ | 11 battle | case |
| 10 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 11 battle | det |
| 11 | battle | battle | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 you | nmod |
| 12 | of | of | ADP | _ | 14 birds | case |
| 13 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 14 birds | det |
| 14 | birds | bird | NOUN | Number=Plur | 11 battle | nmod |
| 15 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 4 asks | punct |
| 16 | say | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 17 | you | you | PRON | Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs | 18 were | nsubj |
| 18 | were | be | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 16 say | ccomp |
| 19 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 16 say | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ask speech: ask a condition, not said to happen | present | blow | you | you | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent you=Recipient | |||
| 2 | say speech: assert | present | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | ||||||
| 3 | be | past | you | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||||
| 4 | battle | the birds | nom battle «act transitive»: of=patient |
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/pg7885/31/28/