---
title: He answered: “I have no spoon.” — Kaffir folk-lore · tree and pragmatics
description: He answered: “I have no spoon.” Who acts: Hlakanyana. 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 271

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He answered: “I have no spoon.”

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**Who acts:** Hlakanyana · **What happens:** answer, have · **To what, where:** spoon · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Hlakanyana), 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:pg71335:10:271
# text = He answered: “I have no spoon.”
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	6	punct	_	_
4	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	ccomp	_	_
7	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	8	det	_	_
8	spoon	spoon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | Hlakanyana |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **have** *in a quote* | present | Hlakanyana | no spoon |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent spoon=Patient |

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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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