Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of the Bird That Made Milk. II., sentence 72
“Do not be afraid; I can command a house to build itself.”
Who acts: you, people · What happens: not be, command, build · To what, where: house, food · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Story of the Bird That Made Milk. II.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, people), 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 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 5 afraid | punct |
| 2 | Do | do | AUX | Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin | 5 afraid | aux |
| 3 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 5 afraid | advmod |
| 4 | be | be | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 5 afraid | cop |
| 5 | afraid | afraid | ADJ | Degree=Pos | root | root |
| 6 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 9 command | punct |
| 7 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 9 command | nsubj |
| 8 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 9 command | aux |
| 9 | command | command | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 5 afraid | ccomp |
| 10 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 11 house | det |
| 11 | house | house | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 command | obj |
| 12 | to | to | PART | _ | 13 build | mark |
| 13 | build | build | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 9 command | advcl |
| 14 | itself | itself | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes | 13 build | obj |
| 15 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 afraid | punct |
| 16 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 5 afraid | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not is in a quote | imperative · do-support | you not said here | afraid property | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | command in a quote | can | the people of that town = people | a house | vn supervision-95.2.2-1 «NP V NP.predicate»: agent=Agent house=Eventuality | ||||
| 3 | build in a quote | to-infinitive | the people of that town = people not said here | food | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset itself=Product |
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/pg71335/4/72/