Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Hlakanyana., sentence 430
The tortoise held fast to Hlakanyana, and would not be pulled off.
What happens: hold, not pull off · To what, where: tortoise, Hlakanyana
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: 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 tortoise | det |
| 2 | tortoise | tortoise | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 pulled | nsubj:pass |
| 3 | held | hold | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 2 tortoise | acl |
| 4 | fast | fast | ADV | Degree=Pos | 3 held | advmod |
| 5 | to | to | ADP | _ | 6 Hlakanyana | case |
| 6 | Hlakanyana | Hlakanyana | PROPN | Number=Sing | 3 held | obl |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 12 pulled | punct |
| 8 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 12 pulled | cc |
| 9 | would | would | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 12 pulled | aux |
| 10 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 12 pulled | advmod |
| 11 | be | be | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 12 pulled | aux:pass |
| 12 | pulled | pull | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | root | root |
| 13 | off | off | ADP | _ | 12 pulled | compound:prt |
| 14 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 12 pulled | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | hold | participle | the tortoise not said here | Hlakanyana | fast property | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||
| 2 | not pull off | would · passive | the tortoise | vn complete-55.2 «NP V NP»: subject=Eventuality |
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/pg71335/10/430/