Kaffir folk-lore, Story of the Girl and the Mbulu., sentence 3
While she was away the boy quarrelled with his sister and killed her.
Who acts: woman, boy · What happens: be, quarrell, kill · To what, where: woman
This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, Story of the Girl and the Mbulu.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (woman, boy), 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 | While | while | SCONJ | _ | 4 away | mark |
| 2 | she | she | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 4 away | nsubj |
| 3 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 away | cop |
| 4 | away | away | ADV | _ | 7 quarrelled | advcl |
| 5 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 6 boy | det |
| 6 | boy | boy | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 quarrelled | nsubj |
| 7 | quarrelled | quarrell | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 8 | with | with | ADP | _ | 10 sister | case |
| 9 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 10 sister | nmod:poss |
| 10 | sister | sister | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 quarrelled | obl |
| 11 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 12 killed | cc |
| 12 | killed | kill | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 7 quarrelled | conj |
| 13 | her | she | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 12 killed | obj |
| 14 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 7 quarrelled | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is | past | woman | away property | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | quarrell | past | the boy | with boy's sister | tree rules | ||||
| 3 | kill | past | the boy not said here | woman | vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent she=Theme |
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/pg71335/16/3/