---
title: The boys returned home and told their mother. — Kaffir folk-lore · tree and pragmatics
description: The boys returned home and told their mother. Who acts: boys. 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg71335/22/39/)

<!-- 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 the Glutton.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg71335/22/) / 39

# Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of the Glutton., sentence 39

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The boys returned home and told their mother.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** boys · **What happens:** return, tell · **To what, where:** mother · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (boys), 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:pg71335:22:39
# text = The boys returned home and told their mother.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	boys	boy	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	returned	return	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	home	home	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
7	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **return** | past | the boys |  |  |  |  | home *property* | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | the boys *not said here* |  | boys's mother |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent mother=Recipient |

<!-- .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 38](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg71335/22/38/)
- next →: [sentence 40](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg71335/22/40/)
- ↑ back to [The Story of the Glutton.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg71335/22/)