---
title: He pulled out his knife and skinned the buffalo. — Kaffir folk-lore · tree and pragmatics
description: He pulled out his knife and skinned the buffalo. Who acts: man. A sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Story of the Glutton., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of the Glutton., sentence 18

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He pulled out his knife and skinned the buffalo.

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** pull out, skin · **To what, where:** knife, buffalo

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This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Story of the Glutton.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man), 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:pg71335:22:18
# text = He pulled out his knife and skinned the buffalo.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	pulled	pull	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	out	out	ADP	RP	_	2	compound:prt	_	_
4	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	knife	knife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	skinned	skin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	buffalo	buffalo	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pull out** | past | man | man's knife |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **skin** | past | man *not said here* | the buffalo |  |  |  |  | vn hurt-40.8.3-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer buffalo=Patient |

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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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