Kaffir folk-lore, Story of the Bird That Made Milk. I., sentence 158
He told them that his village was devoured by famine.
Who acts: father, famine · What happens: tell, devour · To what, where: children, village · 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 (father, famine), 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 | He | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 2 told | nsubj |
| 2 | told | tell | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 2 told | iobj |
| 4 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 8 devoured | mark |
| 5 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 6 village | nmod:poss |
| 6 | village | village | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 devoured | nsubj:pass |
| 7 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 8 devoured | aux:pass |
| 8 | devoured | devour | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 2 told | ccomp |
| 9 | by | by | ADP | _ | 10 famine | case |
| 10 | famine | famine | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 devoured | obl |
| 11 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 told | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | tell speech: assert | past | father | children = child | vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Agent they=Recipient clause=Topic | ||||
| 2 | devour | past · passive | famine | father's village | vn devour-39.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent subject=Patient |
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/pg71335/3/158/