Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Hlakanyana., sentence 257
They went on and reached a place where they had to walk on thorns.
Who acts: knives · What happens: go on, reach, have, walk · To what, where: place, thorns
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 (knives), 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 | They | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 2 went | nsubj |
| 2 | went | go | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | on | on | ADV | _ | 2 went | advmod |
| 4 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 5 reached | cc |
| 5 | reached | reach | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 went | conj |
| 6 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 7 place | det |
| 7 | place | place | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 reached | obj |
| 8 | where | where | ADV | PronType=Rel | 10 had | advmod |
| 9 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 10 had | nsubj |
| 10 | had | have | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 7 place | acl:relcl |
| 11 | to | to | PART | _ | 12 walk | mark |
| 12 | walk | walk | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 10 had | xcomp |
| 13 | on | on | ADP | _ | 14 thorns | case |
| 14 | thorns | thorn | NOUN | Number=Plur | 12 walk | obl |
| 15 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 went | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | go on | past | knives = knife | vn function-105.2.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||||
| 2 | reach | past | knives = knife not said here | a place | vn body_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Agent place=Theme | ||||
| 3 | have | past | knives = knife | tree rules | |||||
| 4 | walk | to-infinitive | knives = knife not said here | thorns | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme on thorn=Trajectory |
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/pg71335/10/257/