Wigwam stories told by North American Indians, VII. the Thunder-bird of the Dakotas, sentence 2
“What is thunder?” a white man asked a Sioux or Dakota Indian.
Who acts: thunder · What happens: be, ask · To what, where: thunder, Sioux · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «Wigwam stories told by North American Indians» by Mary Catherine Judd, VII. the Thunder-bird of the Dakotas. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (thunder), 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 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 4 thunder | punct |
| 2 | What | what | PRON | PronType=Int | 4 thunder | nsubj |
| 3 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 4 thunder | cop |
| 4 | thunder | thunder | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 asked | nsubj |
| 5 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 4 thunder | punct |
| 6 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 4 thunder | punct |
| 7 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 9 man | det |
| 8 | white | white | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 9 man | amod |
| 9 | man | man | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 asked | nsubj |
| 10 | asked | ask | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 11 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 12 Sioux | det |
| 12 | Sioux | Sioux | PROPN | Number=Sing | 10 asked | iobj |
| 13 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 14 Dakota | cc |
| 14 | Dakota | Dakota | PROPN | Number=Sing | 12 Sioux | conj |
| 15 | Indian | Indian | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 10 asked | ccomp |
| 16 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 10 asked | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a in a quote | present | thunder | What nsubj | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | ask speech: ask | past | thunder | a Sioux or Dakota | a white man nsubj | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent sioux=Recipient |
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/pg73136/76/2/