Kaffir folk-lore, Opening, sentence 21
The best narrators are almost invariably ancient dames, and the time chosen for story telling is always the evening.
Who acts: best narrators, time · What happens: be, choose · To what, where: ancient dames, time, evening
This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, Opening. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (best narrators, time), 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 | The | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 3 narrators | det |
| 2 | best | good | ADJ | Degree=Sup | 3 narrators | amod |
| 3 | narrators | narrator | NOUN | Number=Plur | 8 dames | nsubj |
| 4 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 8 dames | cop |
| 5 | almost | almost | ADV | _ | 6 invariably | advmod |
| 6 | invariably | invariably | ADV | _ | 8 dames | advmod |
| 7 | ancient | ancient | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 8 dames | amod |
| 8 | dames | dame | NOUN | Number=Plur | root | root |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 20 evening | punct |
| 10 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 20 evening | cc |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 12 time | det |
| 12 | time | time | NOUN | Number=Sing | 20 evening | nsubj |
| 13 | chosen | choose | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 12 time | acl |
| 14 | for | for | ADP | _ | 16 telling | case |
| 15 | story | story | NOUN | Number=Sing | 16 telling | compound |
| 16 | telling | telling | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 chosen | obl |
| 17 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 20 evening | cop |
| 18 | always | always | ADV | PronType=Tot | 20 evening | advmod |
| 19 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 20 evening | det |
| 20 | evening | evening | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 dames | obl |
| 21 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 8 dames | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a | present | the best narrators | ancient dames | invariably property | tree rules | |||
| 2 | choose | participle | the time not said here | for story telling | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP PP.beneficiary»: agent=Agent for telling=Beneficiary | ||||
| 3 | is a | present | the time | the evening | always property | 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: «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, Project Gutenberg book 71335 (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/pg71335/1/21/