Tanglewood Tales, The Pygmies., part 1, sentence 56

He would lay down his great hand flat on the grass, and challenge the tallest of them to clamber upon it, and straddle from finger to finger.

Who acts: Earth · What happens: lay down, challenge, clamber · To what, where: great hand, grass, tallest

This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pygmies., 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 (Earth), 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	He	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 lay	nsubj
2	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	3 lay	aux
3	lay	lay	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
4	down	down	ADP	_	3 lay	compound:prt
5	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	7 hand	nmod:poss
6	great	great	ADJ	Degree=Pos	7 hand	amod
7	hand	hand	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 lay	obj
8	flat	flat	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 lay	xcomp
9	on	on	ADP	_	11 grass	case
10	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	11 grass	det
11	grass	grass	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 lay	obl
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	14 challenge	punct
13	and	and	CCONJ	_	14 challenge	cc
14	challenge	challenge	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	3 lay	conj
15	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	16 tallest	det
16	tallest	tall	ADJ	Degree=Sup	14 challenge	obj
17	of	of	ADP	_	18 them	case
18	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	16 tallest	nmod
19	to	to	PART	_	20 clamber	mark
20	clamber	clamber	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	14 challenge	advcl
21	upon	upon	ADP	_	22 it	case
22	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	20 clamber	obl
23	,	,	PUNCT	_	25 straddle	punct
24	and	and	CCONJ	_	25 straddle	cc
25	straddle	straddle	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 lay	obl
26	from	from	ADP	_	27 finger	case
27	finger	finger	NOUN	Number=Sing	25 straddle	nmod
28	to	to	ADP	_	29 finger	case
29	finger	finger	NOUN	Number=Sing	25 straddle	nmod
30	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 lay	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	lay down	would	Earth	Earth's great hand	the grass	straddle from finger to finger obl; flat property	vn put_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent hand=Theme on grass=Destination
2	challenge	infinitive	Earth not said here	the tallest of Pygmies			tree rules
3	clamber	to-infinitive	Earth not said here		grass		vn run-51.3.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme upon it=Trajectory

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/pg976/7/56/