Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Hlakanyana., sentence 260
His companion replied: “I cannot do so, because I have no isilanda.”
Who acts: companion · What happens: reply, not do, have · To what, where: isilanda · 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 (companion), 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 | His | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 2 companion | nmod:poss |
| 2 | companion | companion | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 replied | nsubj |
| 3 | replied | reply | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 9 do | punct |
| 5 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 9 do | punct |
| 6 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 9 do | nsubj |
| 7 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 9 do | aux |
| 8 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 9 do | advmod |
| 9 | do | do | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 3 replied | ccomp |
| 10 | so | so | ADV | _ | 9 do | advmod |
| 11 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 14 have | punct |
| 12 | because | because | SCONJ | _ | 14 have | mark |
| 13 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 14 have | nsubj |
| 14 | have | have | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 9 do | advcl |
| 15 | no | no | DET | PronType=Neg | 16 isilanda | det |
| 16 | isilanda | isilanda | NOUN | Number=Sing | 14 have | obj |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 9 do | punct |
| 18 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 9 do | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | reply speech: assert | past | Hlakanyana's companion | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V S-Quote»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 2 | not do in a quote | can | Hlakanyana's companion = companion | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 3 | have in a quote | present | Hlakanyana's companion = companion | no isilanda | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent isilanda=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/pg71335/10/260/