Kaffir folk-lore, The Girl and the Mbulu., sentence 2
It can assume the human form, but cannot part with its tail.
Who acts: mbulu · What happens: assume · To what, where: human form
This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Girl and the Mbulu.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mbulu), 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 | It | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 3 assume | nsubj |
| 2 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 3 assume | aux |
| 3 | assume | assume | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 4 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 6 form | det |
| 5 | human | human | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 6 form | amod |
| 6 | form | form | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 assume | obj |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 11 part | punct |
| 8 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 11 part | cc |
| 9 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 11 part | aux |
| 10 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 11 part | advmod |
| 11 | part | part | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 assume | parataxis |
| 12 | with | with | ADP | _ | 14 tail | case |
| 13 | its | its | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 14 tail | nmod:poss |
| 14 | tail | tail | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 part | nmod |
| 15 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 assume | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | assume | can | mbulu | the human form | part with mbulu's tail parataxis | vn adopt-93.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent form=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/pg71335/36/2/