Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Hlakanyana., sentence 305
The cannibals began to dance when they heard him sing.
Who acts: cannibals, thing · What happens: begin, dance, hear, sing · To what, where: thing
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 (cannibals, thing), 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 cannibals | det |
| 2 | cannibals | cannibal | NOUN | Number=Plur | 3 began | nsubj |
| 3 | began | begin | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | to | to | PART | _ | 5 dance | mark |
| 5 | dance | dance | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 3 began | xcomp |
| 6 | when | when | ADV | PronType=Int | 8 heard | advmod |
| 7 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 8 heard | nsubj |
| 8 | heard | hear | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 dance | advcl |
| 9 | him | he | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 8 heard | obj |
| 10 | sing | sing | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 8 heard | xcomp |
| 11 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 began | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | begin | past | the cannibals | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | |||||
| 2 | dance | to-infinitive | the cannibals not said here | vn modes_of_being_with_motion-47.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||||
| 3 | hear | past | cannibals = cannibal | thing | tree rules | ||||
| 4 | sing speech: express | infinitive | thing not said here | vn sound_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
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/pg71335/10/305/