The Happy Prince, and Other Tales, Opening, part 3, sentence 48

The birds sat on the trees and sang so sweetly that the children used to stop their games in order to listen to them.

Who acts: birds, children · What happens: sit, sing, use, stop, listen · To what, where: trees, games, children

This is a sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (birds, children), 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	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	2 birds	det
2	birds	bird	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 sat	nsubj
3	sat	sit	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	on	on	ADP	_	6 trees	case
5	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	6 trees	det
6	trees	tree	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 sat	obl
7	and	and	CCONJ	_	8 sang	cc
8	sang	sing	VERB	Mood=Ind Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 sat	conj
9	so	so	ADV	_	10 sweetly	advmod
10	sweetly	sweetly	ADV	_	8 sang	advmod
11	that	that	SCONJ	_	14 used	mark
12	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 children	det
13	children	child	NOUN	Number=Plur	14 used	nsubj
14	used	use	VERB	Mood=Ind Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	8 sang	advcl
15	to	to	PART	_	16 stop	mark
16	stop	stop	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	14 used	xcomp
17	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	18 games	nmod:poss
18	games	game	NOUN	Number=Plur	16 stop	obj
19	in	in	SCONJ	ExtPos=SCONJ	22 listen	mark
20	order	order	NOUN	Number=Sing	19 in	fixed
21	to	to	PART	_	22 listen	mark
22	listen	listen	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	16 stop	advcl
23	to	to	ADP	_	24 them	case
24	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	22 listen	obl
25	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 sat	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	other	roles by
1	sit	past	the birds			the trees		vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on tree=Location
2	sing speech: express	past	the birds not said here				sweetly property	vn sound_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme
3	use	past	the children					vn use-105.1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality
4	stop	to-infinitive	the children not said here	children's games				vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP V NP.eventuality»: agent=Subeventuality game=Eventuality
5	listen	to-infinitive	the children not said here		children = child			vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent to they=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: «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Project Gutenberg book 902 (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/pg902/3/48/