Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria, Xxi.--why the Head of the Male Goat Smells So Strong., sentence 1
There was once a male goat who cut a large cotton-tree down and then burnt it.
Who acts: male goat · What happens: be, cut down, burnt · To what, where: large cotton tree, tree
This is a sentence of «Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria» by Elphinstone Dayrell, Xxi.--why the Head of the Male Goat Smells So Strong.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (male goat), 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 | There | there | PRON | PronType=Dem | 2 was | expl |
| 2 | was | be | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | once | once | ADV | NumForm=Word NumType=Mult | 2 was | advmod |
| 4 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 goat | det |
| 5 | male | male | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 6 goat | amod |
| 6 | goat | goat | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 was | nsubj |
| 7 | who | who | PRON | PronType=Rel | 8 cut | nsubj |
| 8 | cut | cut | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 goat | acl:relcl |
| 9 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 13 tree | det |
| 10 | large | large | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 13 tree | amod |
| 11 | cotton | cotton | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 tree | compound |
| 12 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 11 cotton | punct |
| 13 | tree | tree | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 cut | obj |
| 14 | down | down | ADP | _ | 8 cut | compound:prt |
| 15 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 17 burnt | cc |
| 16 | then | then | ADV | PronType=Dem | 17 burnt | advmod |
| 17 | burnt | burnt | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 8 cut | conj |
| 18 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 17 burnt | obj |
| 19 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 was | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | be | past | a male goat | there | once property | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||
| 2 | cut down | past | a male goat | a large cotton tree | vn build-26.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tree=Product | ||||
| 3 | burnt | past | a male goat not said here | tree | then | 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/pg70959/15/1/