---
title: Turn back, turn back, O chief.” — Kaffir folk-lore · tree and pragmatics
description: Turn back, turn back, O chief.” Who acts: you. A sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Story of Sikulume., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Sikulume., sentence 116

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Turn back, turn back, O chief.”

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** turn back · **To what, where:** O chief

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This is a sentence of «Kaffir folk-lore» by George McCall Theal, The Story of Sikulume.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), 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:pg71335:9:116
# text = Turn back, turn back, O chief.”
1	Turn	turn	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	back	back	ADV	RB	_	1	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
4	turn	turn	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	1	conj	_	_
5	back	back	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	O	O	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	compound	_	_
8	chief	chief	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **turn back** | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn banish-10.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **turn back** | infinitive | you *not said here* | O chief |  |  |  |  | vn banish-10.2 «NP V NP»: 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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