Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Hlakanyana., sentence 15

The woman said: “What is this? there was never a child that could speak before it was born.”

Who acts: woman, child · What happens: say, be, speak, bear · To what, where: this, meat · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Story of Hlakanyana.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (woman, child), 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	2 woman	det
2	woman	woman	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 said	nsubj
3	said	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	:	:	PUNCT	_	6 What	punct
5	“	"	PUNCT	_	6 What	punct
6	What	what	PRON	PronType=Int	3 said	ccomp
7	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	8 this	cop
8	this	this	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	6 What	nsubj
9	?	?	PUNCT	_	6 What	punct
10	there	there	PRON	PronType=Dem	11 was	expl
11	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	6 What	acl:relcl
12	never	never	ADV	PronType=Neg	14 child	advmod
13	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	14 child	det
14	child	child	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 was	nsubj
15	that	that	PRON	PronType=Rel	17 speak	nsubj
16	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	17 speak	aux
17	speak	speak	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	14 child	acl:relcl
18	before	before	SCONJ	_	21 born	mark
19	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 born	nsubj:pass
20	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	21 born	aux:pass
21	born	bear	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	17 speak	advcl
22	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 said	punct
23	”	"	PUNCT	_	3 said	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	say speech: ask	past	the woman		What ccomp	vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent
2	is a in a quote	present		this		tree rules
3	speak speech: other in a quote	could	a child			vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent
4	bear in a quote	past · passive		meat		vn birth-28.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient

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/pg71335/10/15/

🌲 Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Hlakanyana., sentence 15

The tree

Pragmatics

Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Hlakanyana., sentence 15