Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Hlakanyana., sentence 400
He tried to go, but when he was in the middle he fell down.
Who acts: monkey · What happens: try, go, be, fall down · To what, where: middle
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 (monkey), 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 | He | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 2 tried | nsubj |
| 2 | tried | try | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | to | to | PART | _ | 4 go | mark |
| 4 | go | go | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 2 tried | xcomp |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 14 fell | punct |
| 6 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 14 fell | cc |
| 7 | when | when | ADV | PronType=Int | 12 middle | advmod |
| 8 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 12 middle | nsubj |
| 9 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 12 middle | cop |
| 10 | in | in | ADP | _ | 12 middle | case |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 12 middle | det |
| 12 | middle | middle | NOUN | Number=Sing | 14 fell | obl |
| 13 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 14 fell | nsubj |
| 14 | fell | fall | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 tried | conj |
| 15 | down | down | ADV | _ | 14 fell | advmod |
| 16 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 tried | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | try | past | monkey | vn try-61.1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | |||||
| 2 | go not said to happen | to-infinitive | monkey not said here | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||||
| 3 | is | past | monkey | the middle | tree rules | ||||
| 4 | fall down | past | monkey | down property | vn occur-48.3 «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/pg71335/10/400/