Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria, Xix.--why the Mist Rises From the Water., sentence 70
Years and years ago the Ikom people had never seen the large wooden drum called ’Ndofu.
Who acts: Ikom people · What happens: not see, call · To what, where: large wooden drum · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria» by Elphinstone Dayrell, Xix.--why the Mist Rises From the Water.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Ikom people), 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 | Years | year | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 ago | obl:unmarked |
| 2 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 3 years | cc |
| 3 | years | year | NOUN | Number=Plur | 1 Years | conj |
| 4 | ago | ago | ADV | _ | 10 seen | advmod |
| 5 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 7 people | det |
| 6 | Ikom | Ikom | PROPN | Number=Sing | 7 people | compound |
| 7 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 10 seen | nsubj |
| 8 | had | have | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 10 seen | aux |
| 9 | never | never | ADV | PronType=Neg | 10 seen | advmod |
| 10 | seen | see | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | root | root |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 14 drum | det |
| 12 | large | large | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 14 drum | amod |
| 13 | wooden | wooden | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 14 drum | amod |
| 14 | drum | drum | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 seen | obj |
| 15 | called | call | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 14 drum | acl |
| 16 | ’ | ' | PUNCT | _ | 17 Ndofu | punct |
| 17 | Ndofu | Ndofu | PROPN | Number=Sing | 15 called | xcomp |
| 18 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 10 seen | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not see | past · perfect | the Ikom people | the large wooden drum | ago property | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer drum=Stimulus | |||
| 2 | call | participle | the large wooden drum not said here | Ndofu xcomp | vn initiate_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V»: 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/pg70959/14/70/