---
title: He could travel very quickly. — Kaffir folk-lore · tree and pragmatics
description: He could travel very quickly. Who acts: father. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg71335/9/147/)

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# Kaffir folk-lore, The Story of Sikulume., sentence 147

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He could travel very quickly.

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**Who acts:** father · **What happens:** travel

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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 (father), 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:pg71335:9:147
# text = He could travel very quickly.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	travel	travel	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	very	very	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	quickly	quickly	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **travel** | could | father |  |  |  |  | quickly *property* | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V»: agent=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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