Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Tangalimlibo., sentence 62

Its grandmother tried by every means to keep it from crying, but in vain.

Who acts: grandmother · What happens: try, mean, keep, cry · To what, where: grandmother, river

This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Story of Tangalimlibo.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (grandmother), 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	Its	its	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	2 grandmother	nmod:poss
2	grandmother	grandmother	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 means	nsubj
3	tried	try	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	2 grandmother	acl
4	by	by	ADP	_	5 every	case
5	every	every	DET	PronType=Tot	3 tried	obl
6	means	mean	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
7	to	to	PART	_	8 keep	mark
8	keep	keep	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	6 means	xcomp
9	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	8 keep	obj
10	from	from	SCONJ	_	11 crying	mark
11	crying	cry	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	8 keep	advcl
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 vain	punct
13	but	but	CCONJ	_	15 vain	cc
14	in	in	ADP	_	15 vain	case
15	vain	vain	ADJ	Degree=Pos	6 means	conj
16	.	.	PUNCT	_	6 means	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	try	participle		river's grandmother not said here	by every	vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer
2	mean	present	river's grandmother			vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
3	keep not said to happen	to-infinitive	river's grandmother not said here	river		vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme
4	cry speech: express	gerund	river's grandmother not said here			vn manner_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent

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/pg71335/6/62/

🌲 Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Tangalimlibo., sentence 62

The tree

Pragmatics

Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Tangalimlibo., sentence 62