Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of the Cannibal Mother and Her Children., sentence 57
Then the bird began to sing its song.
Who acts: bird · What happens: begin, sing · To what, where: song
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 (bird), 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 | Then | then | ADV | PronType=Dem | 4 began | advmod |
| 2 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 3 bird | det |
| 3 | bird | bird | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 began | nsubj |
| 4 | began | begin | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 5 | to | to | PART | _ | 6 sing | mark |
| 6 | sing | sing | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 4 began | xcomp |
| 7 | its | its | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 8 song | nmod:poss |
| 8 | song | song | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 sing | obj |
| 9 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 began | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | begin | past | the bird | then | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | ||||
| 2 | sing speech: express | to-infinitive | the bird not said here | bird's song | vn sound_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location song=Theme | ||||
| 3 | sing | bird | nom song «communication intransitive»: 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/pg71335/15/57/