---
title: They killed an ox. — Kaffir folk-lore · tree and pragmatics
description: They killed an ox. Who acts: horns. A sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, Story of Lion and Little Jackal., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Kaffir folk-lore, Story of Lion and Little Jackal., sentence 51

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They killed an ox.

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**Who acts:** horns · **What happens:** kill · **To what, where:** ox

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This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, Story of Lion and Little Jackal.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (horns), 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:pg71335:25:51
# text = They killed an ox.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	killed	kill	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	ox	ox	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **kill** | past | horns *= horn* | a ox |  |  |  |  | vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent ox=Theme |

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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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