Negro myths from the Georgia coast, told in the vernacular, Opening, part 13, sentence 56
While hogs, dogs, calves, sheep, geese, and ducks were often captured by alligators, they seldom attacked human beings.
Who acts: alligators, ducks · What happens: capture, attack · To what, where: ducks, human beings
This is a sentence of «Negro myths from the Georgia coast, told in the vernacular» by Charles C., Jr. Jones, Opening, part 13. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (alligators, ducks), 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 | While | while | SCONJ | _ | 2 hogs | mark |
| 2 | hogs | hog | NOUN | Number=Plur | 22 attacked | conj |
| 3 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 4 dogs | punct |
| 4 | dogs | dog | NOUN | Number=Plur | 2 hogs | conj |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 6 calves | punct |
| 6 | calves | calf | NOUN | Number=Plur | 2 hogs | conj |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 8 sheep | punct |
| 8 | sheep | sheep | NOUN | Number=Plur | 2 hogs | conj |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 10 geese | punct |
| 10 | geese | goose | NOUN | Number=Plur | 2 hogs | conj |
| 11 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 16 captured | punct |
| 12 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 16 captured | cc |
| 13 | ducks | duck | NOUN | Number=Plur | 16 captured | nsubj |
| 14 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 16 captured | aux:pass |
| 15 | often | often | ADV | _ | 16 captured | advmod |
| 16 | captured | capture | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 2 hogs | acl |
| 17 | by | by | ADP | _ | 18 alligators | case |
| 18 | alligators | alligator | NOUN | Number=Plur | 16 captured | obl |
| 19 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 2 hogs | punct |
| 20 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 22 attacked | nsubj |
| 21 | seldom | seldom | ADV | _ | 22 attacked | advmod |
| 22 | attacked | attack | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 23 | human | human | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 24 beings | amod |
| 24 | beings | being | NOUN | Number=Plur | 22 attacked | obj |
| 25 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 22 attacked | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | capture | past · passive | alligators | ducks | often property | vn steal-10.5-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent subject=Theme | |||
| 2 | attack | past | ducks = duck | human beings | hogs and dogs and calves and sheep and geese conj; seldom property | vn attack-60.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent being=Patient |
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: «Negro myths from the Georgia coast, told in the vernacular» by Charles C., Jr. Jones, Project Gutenberg book 76586 (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/pg76586/13/56/