Kaffir folk-lore, Story of the Bird That Made Milk. I., sentence 108

They said to themselves: “If our father finds us, he will kill us to-day.”

Who acts: children, father · What happens: say, find, kill · To what, where: children, us · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, Story of the Bird That Made Milk. I.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (children, father), 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	2 said	nsubj
2	said	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	to	to	ADP	_	4 themselves	case
4	themselves	themselves	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes	2 said	obl
5	:	:	PUNCT	_	15 kill	punct
6	“	"	PUNCT	_	15 kill	punct
7	If	if	SCONJ	_	10 finds	mark
8	our	our	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=1 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	9 father	nmod:poss
9	father	father	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 finds	nsubj
10	finds	find	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	15 kill	advcl
11	us	we	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	10 finds	obj
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	10 finds	punct
13	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	15 kill	nsubj
14	will	will	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	15 kill	aux
15	kill	kill	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 said	ccomp
16	us	we	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	15 kill	obj
17	to	to	ADP	_	19 day	case
18	-	-	PUNCT	_	17 to	punct
19	day	day	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 kill	obl
20	.	.	PUNCT	_	15 kill	punct
21	”	"	PUNCT	_	15 kill	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	when	roles by
1	say speech: assert	past	children = child		children = child		vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to themselves=Recipient clause=Topic
2	find a condition, not said to happen, in a quote	present	our father	us			vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent we=Topic
3	kill in a quote	future	father	us		day	vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent we=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/pg71335/3/108/

🌲 Kaffir folk-lore, Story of the Bird That Made Milk. I., sentence 108

The tree

Pragmatics

Kaffir folk-lore, Story of the Bird That Made Milk. I., sentence 108