Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria, Xxi.--why the Head of the Male Goat Smells So Strong., sentence 2
When it was quite dead, mushrooms began to grow on the trunk.
Who acts: goat, dead mushrooms · What happens: be, begin, grow · To what, where: trunk
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 (goat, dead mushrooms), 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 | 5 dead | advmod |
| 2 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 5 dead | nsubj |
| 3 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 dead | cop |
| 4 | quite | quite | ADV | _ | 5 dead | advmod |
| 5 | dead | dead | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 7 mushrooms | amod |
| 6 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 5 dead | punct |
| 7 | mushrooms | mushroom | NOUN | Number=Plur | 8 began | nsubj |
| 8 | began | begin | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 9 | to | to | PART | _ | 10 grow | mark |
| 10 | grow | grow | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 8 began | xcomp |
| 11 | on | on | ADP | _ | 13 trunk | case |
| 12 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 13 trunk | det |
| 13 | trunk | trunk | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 grow | obl |
| 14 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 8 began | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is | past | goat | dead property | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | begin | past | dead mushrooms | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | |||||
| 3 | grow | to-infinitive | dead mushrooms not said here | the trunk | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme on trunk=Location |
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/pg70959/15/2/