Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Sikulume., sentence 4

While he was sitting there, he noticed some birds close by which were singing very joyfully.

Who acts: man, birds · What happens: sit, notice, close, sing · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Story of Sikulume.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man, birds), 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 sitting	mark
2	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 sitting	nsubj
3	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 sitting	aux
4	sitting	sit	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	8 noticed	advcl
5	there	there	ADV	PronType=Dem	4 sitting	advmod
6	,	,	PUNCT	_	4 sitting	punct
7	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	8 noticed	nsubj
8	noticed	notice	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
9	some	some	DET	PronType=Ind	10 birds	det
10	birds	bird	NOUN	Number=Plur	11 close	nsubj
11	close	close	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	8 noticed	ccomp
12	by	by	SCONJ	_	15 singing	mark
13	which	which	PRON	PronType=Rel	15 singing	nsubj
14	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	15 singing	aux
15	singing	sing	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	11 close	advcl
16	very	very	ADV	_	17 joyfully	advmod
17	joyfully	joyfully	ADV	_	15 singing	advmod
18	.	.	PUNCT	_	8 noticed	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	where	other	roles by
1	sit	past · progressive	man	there		vn assuming_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent
2	notice	past	man			vn see-30.1-1 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus
3	close	present	some birds			vn other_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient
4	sing speech: express	past · progressive			which nsubj; joyfully property	vn sound_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=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/pg71335/9/4/

🌲 Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Sikulume., sentence 4

The tree

Pragmatics

Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Sikulume., sentence 4