---
title: Did not mother give us this meat to eat?” — Kaffir folk-lore · tree and pragmatics
description: Did not mother give us this meat to eat?” Who acts: mother. A sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Story of Hlakanyana., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Hlakanyana., sentence 170

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Did not mother give us this meat to eat?”

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**Who acts:** mother · **What happens:** not give, eat · **To what, where:** meat, us

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This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Story of Hlakanyana.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mother), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg71335:10:170
# text = Did not mother give us this meat to eat?”
1	Did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
2	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
3	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	give	give	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	iobj	_	_
6	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	det	_	_
7	meat	meat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **give** | past · do-support | mother | this meat | us |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent we=Recipient meat=Theme |
| 2 | **eat** | to-infinitive | mother *not said here* | this meat *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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**Text:** «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, Project Gutenberg book 71335 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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