Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of the Cannibal Mother and Her Children., sentence 48

They were near their grandfather’s village, and were very weak when their mother overtook them.

Who acts: children, mother · What happens: be, overtake · To what, where: village, 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 (children, 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	They	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	7 village	nsubj
2	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	7 village	cop
3	near	near	ADP	_	7 village	case
4	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	5 grandfather	nmod:poss
5	grandfather	grandfather	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 village	nmod:poss
6	’s	's	PART	_	5 grandfather	case
7	village	village	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root
8	,	,	PUNCT	_	12 weak	punct
9	and	and	CCONJ	_	12 weak	cc
10	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	12 weak	cop
11	very	very	ADV	_	12 weak	advmod
12	weak	weak	ADJ	Degree=Pos	7 village	conj
13	when	when	ADV	PronType=Int	16 overtook	advmod
14	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	15 mother	nmod:poss
15	mother	mother	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 overtook	nsubj
16	overtook	overtake	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	12 weak	advcl
17	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	16 overtook	obj
18	.	.	PUNCT	_	7 village	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	is	past	children = child		children's grandfather's village	children's grandfather nmod:poss	tree rules
2	is	past	children = child not said here			weak property	tree rules
3	overtake	past	children's mother	children = child			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/pg71335/15/48/

🌲 Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of the Cannibal Mother and Her Children., sentence 48

The tree

Pragmatics

Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of the Cannibal Mother and Her Children., sentence 48