Kaffir folk-lore, Story of the Cannibal’s Wonderful Bird., sentence 41
He let them wait a little to get very hungry.
Who acts: cannibal, snakes · What happens: let, wait, get · To what, where: snakes, little
This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, Story of the Cannibal’s Wonderful Bird.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (cannibal, snakes), 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 let | nsubj |
| 2 | let | let | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 2 let | obj |
| 4 | wait | wait | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 2 let | xcomp |
| 5 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 little | det |
| 6 | little | little | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 4 wait | obl:unmarked |
| 7 | to | to | PART | _ | 8 get | mark |
| 8 | get | get | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 4 wait | advcl |
| 9 | very | very | ADV | _ | 10 hungry | advmod |
| 10 | hungry | hungry | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 8 get | xcomp |
| 11 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 let | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | let | past | cannibal | snakes = snake | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | wait | infinitive | snakes = snake not said here | a little | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||
| 3 | get | to-infinitive | snakes = snake not said here | hungry property | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Experiencer |
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/pg71335/14/41/