Wigwam stories told by North American Indians, VII. the Thunder-bird of the Dakotas, sentence 24
We believe what they told us when we were children.
Who acts: We, brother · What happens: believe, tell, be · To what, where: us, children · 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 (We, brother), 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 | We | we | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs | 2 believe | nsubj |
| 2 | believe | believe | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=1 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | what | what | PRON | PronType=Int | 5 told | obj |
| 4 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 5 told | nsubj |
| 5 | told | tell | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 believe | ccomp |
| 6 | us | we | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs | 5 told | iobj |
| 7 | when | when | ADV | PronType=Int | 10 children | advmod |
| 8 | we | we | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs | 10 children | nsubj |
| 9 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 10 children | cop |
| 10 | children | child | NOUN | Number=Plur | 5 told | obl |
| 11 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 believe | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | believe | present | We | vn admire-31.2 «NP V that S»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus | |||||
| 2 | tell speech: assert | past | brother | us | what obj | vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent we=Recipient what=Topic | |||
| 3 | is a | past | we | children | 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/pg73136/76/24/