Kaffir folk-lore, The Runaway Children; Or, the Wonderful Feather., sentence 33
They lay down, but were too frightened to close their eyes.
Who acts: children · What happens: lay down, be, close · To what, where: eyes
This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Runaway Children; Or, the Wonderful Feather.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (children), 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 | They | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 2 lay | nsubj |
| 2 | lay | lay | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | down | down | ADV | _ | 2 lay | advmod |
| 4 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 8 frightened | punct |
| 5 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 8 frightened | cc |
| 6 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 8 frightened | cop |
| 7 | too | too | ADV | _ | 8 frightened | advmod |
| 8 | frightened | frightened | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 2 lay | parataxis |
| 9 | to | to | PART | _ | 10 close | mark |
| 10 | close | close | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 8 frightened | advcl |
| 11 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 12 eyes | nmod:poss |
| 12 | eyes | eye | NOUN | Number=Plur | 10 close | obj |
| 13 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 lay | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | lay down | present | children = child | down property | vn create-26.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent | ||||
| 2 | is | past | frightened property | tree rules | |||||
| 3 | close | to-infinitive | children's eyes | vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent eye=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/pg71335/12/33/