Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Hlakanyana., sentence 324
The hyena wanted to come down, but he found his tail was fast.
Who acts: hyena, Hlakanyana, tail · What happens: want, come down, find, be · 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 (hyena, Hlakanyana, tail), 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 hyena | det |
| 2 | hyena | hyena | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 wanted | nsubj |
| 3 | wanted | want | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | to | to | PART | _ | 5 come | mark |
| 5 | come | come | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 3 wanted | xcomp |
| 6 | down | down | ADV | _ | 5 come | advmod |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 10 found | punct |
| 8 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 10 found | cc |
| 9 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 10 found | nsubj |
| 10 | found | find | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 3 wanted | conj |
| 11 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 12 tail | nmod:poss |
| 12 | tail | tail | NOUN | Number=Sing | 14 fast | nsubj |
| 13 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 14 fast | cop |
| 14 | fast | fast | ADV | Degree=Pos | 10 found | ccomp |
| 15 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 wanted | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | want | past | the hyena | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme | |||||
| 2 | come down not said to happen | to-infinitive | the hyena not said here | down property | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||
| 3 | find | past | Hlakanyana | vn declare-29.4-1-1 «NP V what S_INF»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 4 | is | past | Hlakanyana's tail | fast property | tree rules |
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/pg71335/10/324/