Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Hlakanyana., sentence 225
Why don’t you ask me to let you suck this goat?”
Who acts: you · What happens: not ask, let, suck · To what, where: me, you, goat
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 (you), 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 | Why | why | ADV | PronType=Int | 3 n’t | advmod |
| 2 | do | do | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 3 n’t | aux |
| 3 | n’t | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 5 ask | advmod |
| 4 | you | you | PRON | Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs | 5 ask | nsubj |
| 5 | ask | ask | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 6 | me | I | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 5 ask | iobj |
| 7 | to | to | PART | _ | 8 let | mark |
| 8 | let | let | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 5 ask | xcomp |
| 9 | you | you | PRON | Case=Acc Person=2 PronType=Prs | 8 let | obj |
| 10 | suck | suck | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 8 let | xcomp |
| 11 | this | this | DET | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 12 goat | det |
| 12 | goat | goat | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 suck | obj |
| 13 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 5 ask | punct |
| 14 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 5 ask | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not ask speech: ask | present | you | me | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S_INF»: agent=Agent i=Recipient clause=Topic | ||||
| 2 | let not said to happen | to-infinitive | you not said here | you | tree rules | ||||
| 3 | suck | infinitive | you not said here | this goat | vn wipe_manner-10.4.1-1 «NP V NP.source»: agent=Agent goat=Source |
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/pg71335/10/225/