Tanglewood Tales, The Pygmies., part 1, sentence 6

It must have been very pretty to behold their little cities, with streets two or three feet wide, paved with the smallest pebbles, and bordered by habitations about as big as a squirrel's cage.

What happens: be, behold, pave, border · To what, where: little cities, streets

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: 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:pg976:441): 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	It	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	6 pretty	expl
2	must	must	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	6 pretty	aux
3	have	have	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	6 pretty	aux
4	been	be	AUX	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	6 pretty	cop
5	very	very	ADV	_	6 pretty	advmod
6	pretty	pretty	ADJ	Degree=Pos	root	root
7	to	to	PART	_	8 behold	mark
8	behold	behold	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	6 pretty	csubj
9	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	11 cities	nmod:poss
10	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	11 cities	amod
11	cities	city	NOUN	Number=Plur	8 behold	obj
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	14 streets	punct
13	with	with	ADP	_	14 streets	case
14	streets	street	NOUN	Number=Plur	11 cities	nmod
15	two	two	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	18 feet	nummod
16	or	or	CCONJ	_	17 three	cc
17	three	three	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	15 two	conj
18	feet	foot	NOUN	Number=Plur	19 wide	obl:unmarked
19	wide	wide	ADJ	Degree=Pos	14 streets	amod
20	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 paved	punct
21	paved	pave	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	14 streets	acl
22	with	with	ADP	_	25 pebbles	case
23	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	25 pebbles	det
24	smallest	small	ADJ	Degree=Sup	25 pebbles	amod
25	pebbles	pebble	NOUN	Number=Plur	21 paved	obl
26	,	,	PUNCT	_	28 bordered	punct
27	and	and	CCONJ	_	28 bordered	cc
28	bordered	border	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	21 paved	conj
29	by	by	ADP	_	30 habitations	case
30	habitations	habitation	NOUN	Number=Plur	28 bordered	obl:agent
31	about	about	ADV	_	33 big	advmod
32	as	as	ADV	_	33 big	advmod
33	big	big	ADJ	Degree=Pos	30 habitations	amod
34	as	as	ADP	_	38 cage	case
35	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	36 squirrel	det
36	squirrel	squirrel	NOUN	Number=Sing	38 cage	nmod:poss
37	's	's	PART	_	36 squirrel	case
38	cage	cage	NOUN	Number=Sing	33 big	obl
39	.	.	PUNCT	_	6 pretty	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	what, whom	other	roles by
1	is	must · perfect		pretty property	tree rules
2	behold	to-infinitive	Pygmies's little cities	with streets	vn sight-30.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer city=Stimulus
3	pave	participle	streets not said here	with the smallest pebbles	vn fill-9.8-1 «NP V NP PP.theme»: agent=Agent with pebble=Theme
4	border	participle			vn contiguous_location-47.8 «NP V NP»: agent=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: 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/pg976/7/6/