Kaffir folk-lore, Story of the Bird That Made Milk. I., sentence 16
Her husband said: “How can such a thing be?
Who acts: husband, thing · What happens: say, be · 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 (husband, thing), 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 | Her | her | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 2 husband | nmod:poss |
| 2 | husband | husband | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 said | nsubj |
| 3 | said | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 11 be | punct |
| 5 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 11 be | punct |
| 6 | How | how | ADV | PronType=Int | 11 be | advmod |
| 7 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 11 be | aux |
| 8 | such | such | DET | PronType=Ind | 10 thing | det:predet |
| 9 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 10 thing | det |
| 10 | thing | thing | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 be | nsubj |
| 11 | be | be | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 3 said | ccomp |
| 12 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 3 said | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | say speech: ask | past | woman's husband | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 2 | can in a quote | can | such thing | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=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/pg71335/3/16/