Celtic Fairy Tales, The Battle of the Birds, sentence 41
When he was nearing his father's house he was going through a close wood.
Who acts: lad · What happens: near, go · To what, where: house, close wood
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 (lad), 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 | When | when | ADV | PronType=Int | 4 nearing | advmod |
| 2 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 4 nearing | nsubj |
| 3 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 nearing | aux |
| 4 | nearing | near | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | root | root |
| 5 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 6 father | nmod:poss |
| 6 | father | father | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 house | nmod:poss |
| 7 | 's | 's | PART | _ | 6 father | case |
| 8 | house | house | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 nearing | obj |
| 9 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 11 going | nsubj |
| 10 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 11 going | aux |
| 11 | going | go | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 4 nearing | ccomp |
| 12 | through | through | ADP | _ | 15 wood | case |
| 13 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 15 wood | det |
| 14 | close | close | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 15 wood | amod |
| 15 | wood | wood | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 going | obl |
| 16 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 nearing | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | near | past · progressive | lad | lad's father's house | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | go | past · progressive | lad | a close wood | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial_location»: agent=Theme through wood=Initial_Location |
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/pg7885/31/41/