Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Five Heads., sentence 4
He replied, that there was no news in the place that he came from.
Who acts: man, news · What happens: reply, be, come · To what, where: place · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Story of Five Heads.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man, news), 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 replied | nsubj |
| 2 | replied | reply | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 6 was | punct |
| 4 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 6 was | mark |
| 5 | there | there | PRON | PronType=Dem | 6 was | expl |
| 6 | was | be | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 replied | ccomp |
| 7 | no | no | DET | PronType=Neg | 8 news | det |
| 8 | news | news | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 was | nsubj |
| 9 | in | in | ADP | _ | 11 place | case |
| 10 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 11 place | det |
| 11 | place | place | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 news | nmod |
| 12 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 14 came | mark |
| 13 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 14 came | nsubj |
| 14 | came | come | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 11 place | acl:relcl |
| 15 | from | from | ADP | _ | 14 came | obl |
| 16 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 replied | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | reply speech: assert | past | man | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 2 | be | past | no news in the place | there | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||
| 3 | come | past | man | the place not said here | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location place=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/pg71335/5/4/