Kaffir folk-lore, Story of the Bird That Made Milk. I., sentence 55
He said: “This pretty bird of mine is better than a cow.”
Who acts: man, pretty bird · 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 (man, pretty 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 | He | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 2 said | nsubj |
| 2 | said | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 11 better | punct |
| 4 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 11 better | punct |
| 5 | This | this | DET | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 7 bird | det |
| 6 | pretty | pretty | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 7 bird | amod |
| 7 | bird | bird | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 better | nsubj |
| 8 | of | of | ADP | _ | 9 mine | case |
| 9 | mine | my | PRON | Number=Sing Person=1 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 7 bird | nmod |
| 10 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 11 better | cop |
| 11 | better | good | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 2 said | parataxis |
| 12 | than | than | ADP | _ | 14 cow | case |
| 13 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 14 cow | det |
| 14 | cow | cow | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 better | obl |
| 15 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 said | punct |
| 16 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 2 said | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | say speech: assert | past | man | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 2 | is in a quote | present | this pretty bird of mine | than a cow; good 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/pg71335/3/55/