Kaffir folk-lore, Story of the Bird That Made Milk. I., sentence 114

Lonci said: “I went to the river to drink; when I returned they were gone.”

Who acts: Lonci, others · What happens: say, go, drink, be · To what, where: river · 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 (Lonci, others), 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	Lonci	Lonci	PROPN	Number=Sing	2 said	nsubj
2	said	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	:	:	PUNCT	_	6 went	punct
4	“	"	PUNCT	_	6 went	punct
5	I	I	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	6 went	nsubj
6	went	go	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 said	ccomp
7	to	to	ADP	_	9 river	case
8	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	9 river	det
9	river	river	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 went	obl
10	to	to	PART	_	11 drink	mark
11	drink	drink	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	6 went	advcl
12	;	;	PUNCT	_	18 gone	punct
13	when	when	ADV	PronType=Int	15 returned	advmod
14	I	I	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	15 returned	nsubj
15	returned	return	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	18 gone	cop
16	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	18 gone	nsubj
17	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	18 gone	cop
18	gone	gone	ADJ	Degree=Pos	2 said	parataxis
19	.	.	PUNCT	_	18 gone	punct
20	”	"	PUNCT	_	18 gone	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	where	other	roles by
1	say speech: assert	past	Lonci			vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
2	go in a quote	past	Lonci	the river		vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial_location»: agent=Theme to river=Initial_Location
3	drink in a quote	to-infinitive	Lonci not said here			vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
4	is in a quote	past	others = other		gone property	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/pg71335/3/114/

🌲 Kaffir folk-lore, Story of the Bird That Made Milk. I., sentence 114

The tree

Pragmatics

Kaffir folk-lore, Story of the Bird That Made Milk. I., sentence 114