---
title: ‘Why?’ said Taffy, and her eyes shone too with incitement. — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Why?’ said Taffy, and her eyes shone too with incitement. Who acts: Taffy, eyes. A sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, How the Alphabet Was Made, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/10/107/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Just so stories](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/) / [How the Alphabet Was Made](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/10/) / 107

# Just so stories, How the Alphabet Was Made, sentence 107

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘Why?’ said Taffy, and her eyes shone too with incitement.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Taffy, eyes · **What happens:** say, shine · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, How the Alphabet Was Made. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Taffy, eyes), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg2781:10:107
# text = ‘Why?’ said Taffy, and her eyes shone too with incitement.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	Taffy	Taffy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
9	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	eyes	eye	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	_
11	shone	shine	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
12	too	too	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
13	with	with	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	incitement	incitement	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Taffy |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **shine** | past | Taffy's eyes |  |  |  |  | with incitement | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP.location V PP.theme»: agent=Location with incitement=Theme |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, Project Gutenberg book 2781 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 106](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/10/106/)
- next →: [sentence 108](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/10/108/)
- ↑ back to [How the Alphabet Was Made](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/10/)