Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of the Cannibal Mother and Her Children., sentence 39
They were already a long way on their journey, when they saw her following them.
Who acts: man, woman · What happens: be, see, follow, journey · To what, where: long way, journey, woman, man
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 | They | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 6 way | nsubj |
| 2 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 way | cop |
| 3 | already | already | ADV | _ | 6 way | advmod |
| 4 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 way | det |
| 5 | long | long | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 6 way | amod |
| 6 | way | way | NOUN | Number=Sing | root | root |
| 7 | on | on | ADP | _ | 9 journey | case |
| 8 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 9 journey | nmod:poss |
| 9 | journey | journey | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 way | nmod |
| 10 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 13 saw | punct |
| 11 | when | when | ADV | PronType=Int | 13 saw | advmod |
| 12 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 13 saw | nsubj |
| 13 | saw | see | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 way | acl:relcl |
| 14 | her | she | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 13 saw | obj |
| 15 | following | follow | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 13 saw | xcomp |
| 16 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 15 following | obj |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 6 way | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a | past | man | a long way | man's journey | tree rules | |||
| 2 | see | past | man | woman | tree rules | ||||
| 3 | follow | gerund | woman not said here | man | vn chase-51.6 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme | ||||
| 4 | journey | man | nom journey «act transitive»: poss=agent |
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/pg71335/15/39/