Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria, Opening, sentence 79
When I first came to this district, poisoning was rife, and human sacrifices were of frequent occurrence.
Who acts: I, human sacrifices · What happens: come, be · To what, where: district, poisoning rife
This is a sentence of «Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria» by Elphinstone Dayrell, Opening. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, human sacrifices), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.
Mova's own parse. This tree may be wrong.
The tree
The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)
| # | word | lemma | UPOS | features | head | relation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | When | when | ADV | PronType=Int | 4 came | advmod |
| 2 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 4 came | nsubj |
| 3 | first | first | ADV | NumForm=Word NumType=Ord | 4 came | advmod |
| 4 | came | come | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 5 | to | to | ADP | _ | 7 district | case |
| 6 | this | this | DET | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 7 district | det |
| 7 | district | district | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 came | obl |
| 8 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 11 rife | punct |
| 9 | poisoning | poisoning | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 rife | compound |
| 10 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 11 rife | cop |
| 11 | rife | rife | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 district | conj |
| 12 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 19 occurrence | punct |
| 13 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 19 occurrence | cc |
| 14 | human | human | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 15 sacrifices | amod |
| 15 | sacrifices | sacrifice | NOUN | Number=Plur | 19 occurrence | nsubj |
| 16 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 19 occurrence | cop |
| 17 | of | of | ADP | _ | 19 occurrence | case |
| 18 | frequent | frequent | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 19 occurrence | amod |
| 19 | occurrence | occurrence | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 came | obl |
| 20 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 came | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | come | past | I | this district and poisoning rife | first property | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial_location»: agent=Theme to district=Initial_Location | |||
| 2 | is a | past | I not said here | poisoning rife | tree rules | ||||
| 3 | is | past | human sacrifices | of frequent occurrence | tree rules |
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: «Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria» by Elphinstone Dayrell, Project Gutenberg book 70959 (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/pg70959/1/79/