Tanglewood Tales, Circe's Palace., part 3, sentence 14

Even the servants, as they knelt down to present the dishes, might be seen to grin and sneer, while the guests were helping themselves to the offered dainties.

Who acts: servants, guests · What happens: kneel down, present, see, grin, sneer, help · To what, where: dishes, servants

This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Circe's Palace., 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 (servants, guests), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

Checked tree. This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (gutenberg:pg976:1234): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

The tree

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	Even	even	ADV	_	3 servants	advmod
2	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	3 servants	det
3	servants	servant	NOUN	Number=Plur	16 seen	nsubj:pass
4	,	,	PUNCT	_	7 knelt	punct
5	as	as	SCONJ	_	7 knelt	mark
6	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	7 knelt	nsubj
7	knelt	kneel	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	16 seen	advcl
8	down	down	ADV	_	7 knelt	advmod
9	to	to	PART	_	10 present	mark
10	present	present	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	7 knelt	advcl
11	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	12 dishes	det
12	dishes	dish	NOUN	Number=Plur	10 present	obj
13	,	,	PUNCT	_	7 knelt	punct
14	might	might	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	16 seen	aux
15	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	16 seen	aux:pass
16	seen	see	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	root	root
17	to	to	PART	_	18 grin	mark
18	grin	grin	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	16 seen	xcomp
19	and	and	CCONJ	_	20 sneer	cc
20	sneer	sneer	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	18 grin	conj
21	,	,	PUNCT	_	26 helping	punct
22	while	while	SCONJ	_	26 helping	mark
23	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	24 guests	det
24	guests	guest	NOUN	Number=Plur	26 helping	nsubj
25	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	26 helping	aux
26	helping	help	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	16 seen	advcl
27	themselves	themselves	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes	26 helping	obj
28	to	to	ADP	_	31 dainties	case
29	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	31 dainties	det
30	offered	offer	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	31 dainties	amod
31	dainties	dainty	NOUN	Number=Plur	26 helping	obl
32	.	.	PUNCT	_	16 seen	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	kneel down	past	servants = servant		down property	vn assuming_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent
2	present	to-infinitive	servants = servant not said here	the dishes		vn fulfilling-13.4.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent dish=Theme
3	see	might · passive		the servants		tree rules
4	grin	to-infinitive	the servants not said here			vn nonverbal_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent
5	sneer	infinitive	the servants not said here			vn nonverbal_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent
6	help	past · progressive	the guests	servants = servant	to the offered dainties	vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent themselves=Beneficiary
7	offer	participle				vn future_having-13.3 «NP V NP.theme (PP)»: agent=Agent

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: the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/17/14/