---
title: He let them wait a little to get very hungry. — Kaffir folk-lore · tree and pragmatics
description: He let them wait a little to get very hungry. Who acts: cannibal, snakes. A sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, Story of the Cannibal’s Wonderful Bird., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg71335/14/41/)

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# Kaffir folk-lore, Story of the Cannibal’s Wonderful Bird., sentence 41

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He let them wait a little to get very hungry.

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**Who acts:** cannibal, snakes · **What happens:** let, wait, get · **To what, where:** snakes, little

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This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, Story of the Cannibal’s Wonderful Bird.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (cannibal, snakes), 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:pg71335:14:41
# text = He let them wait a little to get very hungry.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	let	let	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	wait	wait	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	obl:unmarked	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	get	get	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	advcl	_	_
9	very	very	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	hungry	hungry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **let** | past | cannibal | snakes *= snake* |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **wait** | infinitive | snakes *= snake* *not said here* | a little |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **get** | to-infinitive | snakes *= snake* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | hungry *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer |

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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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