---
title: First they ate the eland. — Kaffir folk-lore · tree and pragmatics
description: First they ate the eland. Who acts: cannibals. A sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Story of Kenkebe., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg71335/19/100/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Kaffir folk-lore](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg71335/) / [The Story of Kenkebe.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg71335/19/) / 100

# Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Kenkebe., sentence 100

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
First they ate the eland.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** cannibals · **What happens:** eat · **To what, where:** eland

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

<!-- .note-en -->
**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg71335:19:100
# text = First they ate the eland.
1	First	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	3	advmod	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	ate	eat	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	eland	eland	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **eat** | past | cannibals *= cannibal* | the eland |  |  |  | first *property* | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent eland=Patient |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 99](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg71335/19/99/)
- next →: [sentence 101](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg71335/19/101/)
- ↑ back to [The Story of Kenkebe.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg71335/19/)