---
title: The snake replied: — Kaffir folk-lore · tree and pragmatics
description: The snake replied: Who acts: snake. A sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, Story of the Girl Who Disregarded the Custom of Ntonjane., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Kaffir folk-lore, Story of the Girl Who Disregarded the Custom of Ntonjane., sentence 8

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The snake replied:

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**Who acts:** snake · **What happens:** reply

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This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, Story of the Girl Who Disregarded the Custom of Ntonjane.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (snake), 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:pg71335:7:8
# text = The snake replied:
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	snake	snake	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	replied	reply	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reply** *speech: assert* | participle | the snake |  |  |  |  |  | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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