---
title: In South African English "now" can mean soon, "now now" a bit sooner… — "Five more minutes" and other waiting games · tree and pragmatics
description: In South African English "now" can mean soon, "now now" a bit sooner, and "just now" a bit later. A sentence of the lesson «"Five more minutes" and other waiting games» of the world course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# "Five more minutes" and other waiting games, sentence 24

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In South African English "now" can mean soon, "now now" a bit sooner, and "just now" a bit later.

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**What happens:** mean

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This is a sentence of the lesson «"Five more minutes" and other waiting games» of the world course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:world:109-five-more-minutes-and-waiting-games.lesson:24
# text = In South African English "now" can mean soon, "now now" a bit sooner, and "just now" a bit later.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = world
# lesson = 109-five-more-minutes-and-waiting-games.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R5-strong ×1, R6-punct-agree ×2, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	South	South	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	compound	_	_
3	African	African	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=4:compound|HaikuPos=PROPN:NNP:Number=Sing
4	English	English	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	_
6	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	9	nsubj	_	_
7	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
8	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	mean	mean	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
10	soon	soon	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	9	advmod	_	_
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
12	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
13	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	18	advmod	_	_
14	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	18	advmod	_	_
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	14	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=18:punct|HaikuPos=PUNCT:``:_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	bit	bit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl:unmarked	_	_
18	sooner	soon	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	9	ccomp	_	_
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	27	cc	_	_
21	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	27	punct	_	_
22	just	just	ADV	RB	_	23	advmod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=27:advmod
23	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	27	advmod	_	_
24	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	23	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=27:punct|HaikuPos=PUNCT:``:_
25	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	26	det	_	_
26	bit	bit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	27	obl:unmarked	_	_
27	later	late	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	18	conj	_	_
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **mean** | can |  |  |  |  |  | in African English; soon *property* | vn representation-110.1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Pivot in english=Attribute |

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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.

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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:world:109-five-more-minutes-and-waiting-games.lesson:24`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R5-strong ×1, R6-punct-agree ×2, R7-rel-agree ×1. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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