---
title: ‘S’pose you saw this scratched by the side of a pool in the beaver-s… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘S’pose you saw this scratched by the side of a pool in the beaver-swamp?’ Who acts: S’pose, this. A sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, How the Alphabet Was Made, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Just so stories, How the Alphabet Was Made, sentence 114

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‘S’pose you saw this scratched by the side of a pool in the beaver-swamp?’

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**Who acts:** S’pose, this · **What happens:** see, scratch · **To what, where:** this

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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 (S’pose, this), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**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:pg2781:10:114
# text = ‘S’pose you saw this scratched by the side of a pool in the beaver-swamp?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	S’pose	s'pose	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	4	obj	_	_
6	scratched	scratch	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	xcomp	_	_
7	by	by	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	side	side	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	pool	pool	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
15	beaver	beaver	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	swamp	swamp	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **see** | past | S’pose | this |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **scratch** | participle | this *not said here* |  |  |  |  | by the side of a pool in the beaver swamp | vn rummage-35.5 «NP V PP.location PP.theme»: agent=Agent by side=Location |

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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:** «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.

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