Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria, Opening, sentence 86
One of the station labourers who knew a little English, said: “Poor Okuni.”
Who acts: station labourers · What happens: know, say · To what, where: little English · Speech: someone speaks here
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 (station labourers), 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 | One | one | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 12 said | ccomp |
| 2 | of | of | ADP | _ | 5 labourers | case |
| 3 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 5 labourers | det |
| 4 | station | station | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 labourers | compound |
| 5 | labourers | labourer | NOUN | Number=Plur | 1 One | nmod |
| 6 | who | who | PRON | PronType=Rel | 7 knew | nsubj |
| 7 | knew | know | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 labourers | acl:relcl |
| 8 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 10 English | det |
| 9 | little | little | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 10 English | amod |
| 10 | English | English | PROPN | Number=Sing | 7 knew | obj |
| 11 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 12 said | punct |
| 12 | said | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 13 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 16 Okuni | punct |
| 14 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 16 Okuni | punct |
| 15 | Poor | poor | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 16 Okuni | amod |
| 16 | Okuni | Okuni | PROPN | Number=Sing | 12 said | ccomp |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 16 Okuni | punct |
| 18 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 16 Okuni | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | know | past | the station labourers | a little English | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer english=Stimulus | ||||
| 2 | say speech: assert | past | One of the station labourers ccomp; Poor Okuni ccomp | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: 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: «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/pg70959/1/86/