Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of the Bird That Made Milk. II., sentence 88
While we were roasting wild roots A great darkness fell upon us.
Who acts: we, great darkness · What happens: roast, fall · To what, where: wild roots
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 (we, great darkness), 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 | While | while | SCONJ | _ | 4 roasting | mark |
| 2 | we | we | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs | 4 roasting | nsubj |
| 3 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 roasting | aux |
| 4 | roasting | roast | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 10 fell | advcl |
| 5 | wild | wild | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 6 roots | amod |
| 6 | roots | root | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 roasting | obj |
| 7 | A | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 9 darkness | det |
| 8 | great | great | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 9 darkness | amod |
| 9 | darkness | darkness | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 fell | nsubj |
| 10 | fell | fall | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 11 | upon | upon | ADP | _ | 12 us | case |
| 12 | us | we | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs | 10 fell | obl |
| 13 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 10 fell | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | roast | past · progressive | we | wild roots | vn cooking-45.3 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent root=Patient | ||||
| 2 | fall | past | a great darkness | upon us | vn occur-48.3 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme upon we=Location |
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/pg71335/4/88/