---
title: Gently he asks why he told such a fib, since his stamping would not… — Just So Stories, The Butterfly that Stamped, par… · tree and pragmatics
description: Gently he asks why he told such a fib, since his stamping would not bend a blade of grass. Who acts: Suleiman, stamping. A sentence of the lesson «Just So Stories, The Butterfly that Stamped, part 1: a wise king, a hungry Animal and a butterfly's boast» of the books course of Mova's primary school w
---

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# Just So Stories, The Butterfly that Stamped, part 1: a wise king, a hungry Animal and a butterfly's boast, sentence 11

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Gently he asks why he told such a fib, since his stamping would not bend a blade of grass.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Suleiman, stamping · **What happens:** ask, tell, not bend · **To what, where:** fib, blade · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Just So Stories, The Butterfly that Stamped, part 1: a wise king, a hungry Animal and a butterfly's boast» of the books course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Suleiman, stamping), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:books:096-justso-butterfly-1-the-boast.lesson:11
# text = Gently he asks why he told such a fib, since his stamping would not bend a blade of grass.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = books
# lesson = 096-justso-butterfly-1-the-boast.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R5-strong ×1
1	Gently	gently	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	asks	ask	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	advcl	_	_
7	such	such	DET	PDT	PronType=Ind	9	det:predet	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	fib	fib	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
11	since	since	SCONJ	IN	_	16	mark	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	stamping	stamping	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
14	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
15	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	16	advmod	_	_
16	bend	bend	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	advcl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=3:advcl
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	blade	blade	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	_
19	of	of	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	grass	grass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nmod	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: narrate
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | present | Suleiman |  |  |  |  | gently *property* | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | Suleiman | such fib |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent fib=Recipient |
| 3 | **not** **bend** | would | Suleiman's stamping | a blade of grass |  |  |  |  | vn knead-26.5 «NP V NP.material»: agent=Agent blade=Material |

<!-- .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.

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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:books:096-justso-butterfly-1-the-boast.lesson:11`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R5-strong ×1. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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