---
title: She replied: “Surely I smell fat children.” — Kaffir folk-lore · tree and pragmatics
description: She replied: “Surely I smell fat children.” Who acts: woman. A sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Runaway Children; Or, the Wonderful Feather., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Kaffir folk-lore, The Runaway Children; Or, the Wonderful Feather., sentence 22

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She replied: “Surely I smell fat children.”

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**Who acts:** woman · **What happens:** reply, smell · **To what, where:** fat children · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Runaway Children; Or, the Wonderful Feather.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (woman), 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:pg71335:12:22
# text = She replied: “Surely I smell fat children.”
1	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	2	punct	_	_
4	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	Surely	surely	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
6	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	smell	smell	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
8	fat	fat	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | woman |  |  |  |  |  | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **smell** *in a quote* | present | woman | fat children |  |  |  | surely *property* | vn see-30.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer child=Stimulus |

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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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