Wigwam stories told by North American Indians, Meaning of Indian Totems and Names, sentence 11
This would mean to us that his totem or first ancestor was a fox.
Who acts: This, totem · What happens: mean, be · To what, where: us, fox
This is a sentence of «Wigwam stories told by North American Indians» by Mary Catherine Judd, Meaning of Indian Totems and Names. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (This, totem), 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 | This | this | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 3 mean | nsubj |
| 2 | would | would | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 3 mean | aux |
| 3 | mean | mean | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 4 | to | to | ADP | _ | 5 us | case |
| 5 | us | we | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs | 3 mean | obl |
| 6 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 14 fox | mark |
| 7 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 8 totem | nmod:poss |
| 8 | totem | totem | NOUN | Number=Sing | 14 fox | nsubj |
| 9 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 11 ancestor | cc |
| 10 | first | first | ADJ | Degree=Pos NumForm=Word NumType=Ord | 11 ancestor | amod |
| 11 | ancestor | ancestor | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 totem | conj |
| 12 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 14 fox | cop |
| 13 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 14 fox | det |
| 14 | fox | fox | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 mean | advcl |
| 15 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 mean | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | mean | would | This | us | vn representation-110.1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Pivot to we=Attribute | ||||
| 2 | is a | past | fox's totem or first ancestor | a fox | tree rules |
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: «Wigwam stories told by North American Indians» by Mary Catherine Judd, Project Gutenberg book 73136 (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/pg73136/14/11/