Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of the Cannibal Mother and Her Children., sentence 12

When they arrived at their father’s house, they listened outside to find out if their mother was there.

Who acts: man, mother · What happens: arrive, listen, find out, be · To what, where: house

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, mother), 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	When	when	ADV	PronType=Int	3 arrived	advmod
2	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 arrived	nsubj
3	arrived	arrive	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	11 listened	advcl
4	at	at	ADP	_	8 house	case
5	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	6 father	nmod:poss
6	father	father	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 house	nmod:poss
7	’s	's	PART	_	6 father	case
8	house	house	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 arrived	obl
9	,	,	PUNCT	_	3 arrived	punct
10	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	11 listened	nsubj
11	listened	listen	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
12	outside	outside	ADV	_	11 listened	advmod
13	to	to	PART	_	14 find	mark
14	find	find	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	11 listened	advcl
15	out	out	ADP	_	14 find	compound:prt
16	if	if	SCONJ	_	20 there	mark
17	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	18 mother	nmod:poss
18	mother	mother	NOUN	Number=Sing	20 there	nsubj
19	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	20 there	cop
20	there	there	ADV	PronType=Dem	14 find	ccomp
21	.	.	PUNCT	_	11 listened	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	where	other	roles by
1	arrive	past	man	man's father's house		vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
2	listen	past	man		outside property	vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent
3	find out	to-infinitive	man not said here			vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V PP.topic»: agent=Agent
4	is a condition, not said to happen	past	man's mother		there property	tree rules

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/pg71335/15/12/

🌲 Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of the Cannibal Mother and Her Children., sentence 12

The tree

Pragmatics

Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of the Cannibal Mother and Her Children., sentence 12