Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of the Cannibal Mother and Her Children., sentence 1
There was once a man and a woman who had two children, a son and a daughter.
Who acts: man, woman · What happens: be, have · To what, where: two children
This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Story of the Cannibal Mother and Her Children.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man, woman), 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 | There | there | PRON | PronType=Dem | 2 was | expl |
| 2 | was | be | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | once | once | ADV | NumForm=Word NumType=Mult | 2 was | advmod |
| 4 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 5 man | det |
| 5 | man | man | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 was | nsubj |
| 6 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 8 woman | cc |
| 7 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 8 woman | det |
| 8 | woman | woman | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 man | conj |
| 9 | who | who | PRON | PronType=Rel | 10 had | nsubj |
| 10 | had | have | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 8 woman | acl:relcl |
| 11 | two | two | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 12 children | nummod |
| 12 | children | child | NOUN | Number=Plur | 10 had | obj |
| 13 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 15 son | punct |
| 14 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 15 son | det |
| 15 | son | son | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 man | conj |
| 16 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 18 daughter | cc |
| 17 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 18 daughter | det |
| 18 | daughter | daughter | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 man | conj |
| 19 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 was | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | be | past | a man and a woman and a son and a daughter | there | once property | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||
| 2 | have | past | a woman | two children | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=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/pg71335/15/1/