Tanglewood Tales, Circe's Palace., part 1, sentence 23
A moment afterwards, a bird came flying towards him, and hovered in the air, so as almost to brush his face with its wings.
Who acts: moment · What happens: come, fly, hover, brush · To what, where: air, face
This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Circe's Palace., part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (moment), 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 | A | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 2 moment | det |
| 2 | moment | moment | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 came | nsubj |
| 3 | afterwards | afterwards | ADV | _ | 2 moment | advmod |
| 4 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 2 moment | punct |
| 5 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 bird | det |
| 6 | bird | bird | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 came | nsubj |
| 7 | came | come | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 8 | flying | fly | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 7 came | xcomp |
| 9 | towards | towards | ADP | _ | 10 him | case |
| 10 | him | he | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 8 flying | obl |
| 11 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 13 hovered | punct |
| 12 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 13 hovered | cc |
| 13 | hovered | hover | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 7 came | conj |
| 14 | in | in | ADP | _ | 16 air | case |
| 15 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 16 air | det |
| 16 | air | air | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 hovered | obl |
| 17 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 22 brush | punct |
| 18 | so | so | ADV | _ | 22 brush | advmod |
| 19 | as | as | SCONJ | _ | 22 brush | mark |
| 20 | almost | almost | ADV | _ | 22 brush | advmod |
| 21 | to | to | PART | _ | 22 brush | mark |
| 22 | brush | brush | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 13 hovered | conj |
| 23 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 24 face | nmod:poss |
| 24 | face | face | NOUN | Number=Sing | 22 brush | obj |
| 25 | with | with | ADP | _ | 27 wings | case |
| 26 | its | its | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 27 wings | nmod:poss |
| 27 | wings | wing | NOUN | Number=Plur | 22 brush | obl |
| 28 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 7 came | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | come | past | a moment | tree rules | |||||
| 2 | fly | gerund | a moment not said here | towards bird | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme towards he=Destination | ||||
| 3 | hover | past | a moment not said here | the air | vn modes_of_being_with_motion-47.3 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in air=Location | ||||
| 4 | brush | to-infinitive | a moment not said here | bird's face | with face's wings; almost property | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V NP.destination PP.theme»: agent=Agent face=Destination with wing=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: «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/pg976/15/23/