---
title: He told his wife to make a fire. — Kaffir folk-lore · tree and pragmatics
description: He told his wife to make a fire. Who acts: famine. A sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Story of Kenkebe., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Kenkebe., sentence 24

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He told his wife to make a fire.

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**Who acts:** famine · **What happens:** tell, make · **To what, where:** wife, fire · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (famine), 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:pg71335:19:24
# text = He told his wife to make a fire.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	iobj	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	make	make	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	ccomp	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	fire	fire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | famine |  | famine's wife |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent wife=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **make** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive |  | a fire |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset fire=Product |

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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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- ← previous: [sentence 23](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg71335/19/23/)
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- ↑ back to [The Story of Kenkebe.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg71335/19/)