---
title: With this sharp stone I will cut off your head!” — Kaffir folk-lore · tree and pragmatics
description: With this sharp stone I will cut off your head!” Who acts: I. A sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, Story of the Bird That Made Milk. I., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Kaffir folk-lore, Story of the Bird That Made Milk. I., sentence 43

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With this sharp stone I will cut off your head!”

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** cut off · **To what, where:** head

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This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, Story of the Bird That Made Milk. I.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg71335:3:43
# text = With this sharp stone I will cut off your head!”
1	With	with	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	4	det	_	_
3	sharp	sharp	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	stone	stone	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
5	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	cut	cut	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
8	off	off	ADP	RP	_	7	compound:prt	_	_
9	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cut off** | future | I | your head |  |  |  | with this sharp stone | vn stop-55.4-1 «NP V NP.eventuality»: agent=Affector head=Eventuality |

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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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