---
title: “Go to my father and my mother and tell them I am taken by the river.” — Kaffir folk-lore · tree and pragmatics
description: “Go to my father and my mother and tell them I am taken by the river.” Who acts: people, river. A sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Story of Tangalimlibo., 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/pg71335/6/101/)

<!-- 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 Tangalimlibo.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg71335/6/) / 101

# Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Tangalimlibo., sentence 101

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“Go to my father and my mother and tell them I am taken by the river.”

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** people, river · **What happens:** go, tell, take · **To what, where:** people, I · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Story of Tangalimlibo.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (people, river), 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:pg71335:6:101
# text = “Go to my father and my mother and tell them I am taken by the river.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Go	go	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
7	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	tell	tell	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
11	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	iobj	_	_
12	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
13	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux:pass	_	_
14	taken	take	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	10	ccomp	_	_
15	by	by	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	river	river	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** *in a quote* | imperative | people *not said here* |  |  |  |  | to my father and my mother | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to father=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | infinitive | people *not said here* |  | people |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent they=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 3 | **take** *in a quote* | present · passive | the river | I |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP ADVP»: agent=Instrument subject=Destination |

<!-- .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 100](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg71335/6/100/)
- next →: [sentence 102](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg71335/6/102/)
- ↑ back to [The Story of Tangalimlibo.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg71335/6/)