Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Sikulume., sentence 49
He stuck his assagai in the ground, and told them to look at it.
Who acts: cannibal · What happens: stick, tell, look · To what, where: assagai, ground, birds · 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 (cannibal), 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 stuck | nsubj |
| 2 | stuck | stick | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 4 assagai | nmod:poss |
| 4 | assagai | assagai | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 stuck | obj |
| 5 | in | in | ADP | _ | 7 ground | case |
| 6 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 7 ground | det |
| 7 | ground | ground | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 stuck | obl |
| 8 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 10 told | punct |
| 9 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 10 told | cc |
| 10 | told | tell | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 stuck | conj |
| 11 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 10 told | iobj |
| 12 | to | to | PART | _ | 13 look | mark |
| 13 | look | look | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 10 told | xcomp |
| 14 | at | at | ADP | _ | 15 it | case |
| 15 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 13 look | obl |
| 16 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 stuck | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | stick | past | cannibal | cannibal's assagai | the ground | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent assagai=Theme in ground=Destination | |||
| 2 | tell speech: assert | past | cannibal not said here | birds = bird | vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Agent they=Recipient clause=Topic | ||||
| 3 | look not said to happen | to-infinitive | cannibal not said here | at ground | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at it=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/pg71335/9/49/