Tanglewood Tales, The Dragon's Teeth., part 2, sentence 29

At length, one morning, when they were taking their staffs in hand to set out, he thus addressed them:

Who acts: mother, Cilix · What happens: take, set out, address · To what, where: staffs, hand, mother, length

This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Dragon's Teeth., part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mother, Cilix), 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	At	at	ADP	_	2 length	case
2	length	length	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 addressed	obl
3	,	,	PUNCT	_	5 morning	punct
4	one	one	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	5 morning	nummod
5	morning	morning	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 length	parataxis
6	,	,	PUNCT	_	10 taking	punct
7	when	when	ADV	PronType=Int	10 taking	advmod
8	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	10 taking	nsubj
9	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	10 taking	aux
10	taking	take	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	5 morning	conj
11	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	12 staffs	nmod:poss
12	staffs	staff	NOUN	Number=Plur	10 taking	obj
13	in	in	ADP	_	14 hand	case
14	hand	hand	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 taking	obl
15	to	to	PART	_	16 set	mark
16	set	set	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	10 taking	advcl
17	out	out	ADP	_	16 set	compound:prt
18	,	,	PUNCT	_	2 length	punct
19	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 addressed	nsubj
20	thus	thus	ADV	_	21 addressed	advmod
21	addressed	address	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
22	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 addressed	obj
23	:	:	PUNCT	_	21 addressed	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	take	past · progressive	mother	mother's staffs	hand		vn fit-54.3 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent staff=Value in hand=Location
2	set out	to-infinitive	mother not said here				vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
3	address	past	Cilix	mother	length	thus property	vn illustrate-25.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Destination

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: «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Project Gutenberg book 976 (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/pg976/11/29/