---
title: An eagle appeared high in the air, seeming to descend from heaven. — Legends of the conquest of Spain · tree and pragmatics
description: An eagle appeared high in the air, seeming to descend from heaven. Who acts: eagle. A sentence of «Legends of the conquest of Spain» by Washington Irving, Story of the Marvellous and Portentous Tower., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Legends of the conquest of Spain, Story of the Marvellous and Portentous Tower., sentence 82

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An eagle appeared high in the air, seeming to descend from heaven.

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**Who acts:** eagle · **What happens:** appear, seem, descend · **To what, where:** air, heaven

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This is a sentence of «Legends of the conquest of Spain» by Washington Irving, Story of the Marvellous and Portentous Tower.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (eagle), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg77685:8:82
# text = An eagle appeared high in the air, seeming to descend from heaven.
1	An	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	eagle	eagle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	appeared	appear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	high	high	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	xcomp	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	air	air	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
9	seeming	seem	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	3	advcl	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	descend	descend	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	xcomp	_	_
12	from	from	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	heaven	heaven	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **appear** | past | a eagle |  |  | the air |  | high *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in air=Location |
| 2 | **seem** | gerund | a eagle *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Theme clause=Attribute |
| 3 | **descend** | to-infinitive | a eagle *not said here* |  |  | heaven |  |  | vn meander-47.7-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme from heaven=Location |

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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.

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**Text:** «Legends of the conquest of Spain» by Washington Irving, Project Gutenberg book 77685 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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