---
title: The bird sang more loudly than before, and tore one of her legs off. — Kaffir folk-lore · tree and pragmatics
description: The bird sang more loudly than before, and tore one of her legs off. Who acts: bird. A sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Story of the Cannibal Mother and Her Children., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of the Cannibal Mother and Her Children., sentence 70

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The bird sang more loudly than before, and tore one of her legs off.

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**Who acts:** bird · **What happens:** sing, tore off · **To what, where:** one

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This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Story of the Cannibal Mother and Her Children.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (bird), 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:pg71335:15:70
# text = The bird sang more loudly than before, and tore one of her legs off.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	sang	sing	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	5	advmod	_	_
5	loudly	loudly	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
6	than	than	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	before	before	ADV	RB	_	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	tore	tore	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
11	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	10	obj	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	legs	leg	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nmod	_	_
15	off	off	ADV	RB	_	10	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sing** *speech: express* | past | the bird |  |  |  |  | loudly *property* | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP.location V PP.theme»: agent=Location |
| 2 | **tore off** | past | the bird *not said here* | one of mother's legs |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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