Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Sikulume., sentence 6
They were very beautiful to look upon, and they sang differently from other birds.
Who acts: birds · What happens: be, look, sing
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 (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 | They | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 4 beautiful | nsubj |
| 2 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 beautiful | cop |
| 3 | very | very | ADV | _ | 4 beautiful | advmod |
| 4 | beautiful | beautiful | ADJ | Degree=Pos | root | root |
| 5 | to | to | PART | _ | 6 look | mark |
| 6 | look | look | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 4 beautiful | advcl |
| 7 | upon | upon | ADP | _ | 6 look | obl |
| 8 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 11 sang | punct |
| 9 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 11 sang | cc |
| 10 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 11 sang | nsubj |
| 11 | sang | sing | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 beautiful | conj |
| 12 | differently | differently | ADV | _ | 11 sang | advmod |
| 13 | from | from | ADP | _ | 15 birds | case |
| 14 | other | other | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 15 birds | amod |
| 15 | birds | bird | NOUN | Number=Plur | 11 sang | obl |
| 16 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 beautiful | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is | past | birds = bird | beautiful property | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | look | to-infinitive | birds = bird not said here | vn stimulus_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus | |||||
| 3 | sing speech: express | past | birds = bird | from other birds; differently 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/pg71335/9/6/