Kaffir folk-lore, Story of the Bird That Made Milk. I., sentence 132
A bird came one day with a child, and left it there by their house.
Who acts: bird · What happens: come, leave · To what, where: place
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 (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 | A | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 2 bird | det |
| 2 | bird | bird | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 came | nsubj |
| 3 | came | come | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | one | one | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 5 day | nummod |
| 5 | day | day | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 came | obl:unmarked |
| 6 | with | with | ADP | _ | 8 child | case |
| 7 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 8 child | det |
| 8 | child | child | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 came | obl |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 11 left | punct |
| 10 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 11 left | cc |
| 11 | left | leave | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 3 came | conj |
| 12 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 11 left | obj |
| 13 | there | there | ADV | PronType=Dem | 11 left | advmod |
| 14 | by | by | ADP | _ | 16 house | case |
| 15 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 16 house | nmod:poss |
| 16 | house | house | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 left | obl |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 came | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | come | past | a bird | day | with a child | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||
| 2 | leave | past | a bird not said here | place | there | by children's house | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent it=Theme by house=Location |
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/pg71335/3/132/