---
title: Genesis 4:8 (JPS 1917) — And Cain spoke unto Abel his brother. · tree and pragmatics
description: And Cain spoke unto Abel his brother. Who acts: Cain. Genesis 4:8 in JPS 1917 with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Genesis 4:8 · JPS 1917, sentence 1 of 2

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And Cain spoke unto Abel his brother.

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**Who acts:** Cain · **What happens:** speak · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is Genesis 4:8 · JPS 1917, sentence 1 of 2 in the English of the Jewish Publication Society's 1917 translation, from Mova's open Bible corpus. The page gives the sentence's syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies, parsed by Mova and checked by a teacher model — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Cain), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it. The original of the verse links back to its own tree and to the Targum.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = jps:GEN:96
# text = And Cain spoke unto Abel his brother.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	Cain	Cain	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	spoke	speak	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	unto	unto	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	Abel	Abel	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
6	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	brother	brother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	appos	_	_
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: narrate
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **speak** *speech: other* | past | Cain |  |  |  |  | unto Abel | vn talk-37.5 «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.

## The Hebrew of this verse {#hebrew}

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וַיֹּ֥אמֶר קַ֖יִן אֶל־הֶ֣בֶל אָחִ֑יו וַֽיְהִי֙ בִּהְיוֹתָ֣ם בַּשָּׂדֶ֔ה וַיָּ֥קָם קַ֛יִן אֶל־הֶ֥בֶל אָחִ֖יו וַיַּהַרְגֵֽהוּ׃

[Genesis 4:8: the Hebrew tree, its pragmatics and Targum Onkelos →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/torah/GEN.4.8/)

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This verse in JPS 1917:

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1. **And Cain spoke unto Abel his brother.**
2. [And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/torah/jps/GEN.97/)

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**Source.** The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text, Jewish Publication Society, 1917, from eBible.org: public domain. Sentence `jps:GEN:96` of Mova's parse database.

**The tree and the speech act** come from Mova's cycle: the small model's draft, read by a large model as teacher, passed by Mova's gates (Elamur Cosmic License). **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the chapter read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence of the chapter.

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