---
title: O Daddy, we must tell Mummy, quick!’ and Taffy danced all round him. — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: O Daddy, we must tell Mummy, quick!’ and Taffy danced all round him. Who acts: we, Taffy. 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/pg2781/10/125/)

<!-- 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/) / 125

# Just so stories, How the Alphabet Was Made, sentence 125

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
O Daddy, we must tell Mummy, quick!’ and Taffy danced all round him.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** we, Taffy · **What happens:** tell, dance · **To what, where:** Mummy · **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 (we, Taffy), 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:pg2781:10:125
# text = O Daddy, we must tell Mummy, quick!’ and Taffy danced all round him.
1	O	of	ADP	IN	Abbr=Yes	2	case	_	_
2	Daddy	Daddy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	Mummy	Mummy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
9	quick	quick	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
13	Taffy	Taffy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
14	danced	dance	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
15	all	all	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
16	round	round	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | must | we |  | Mummy |  |  | of Daddy | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent mummy=Recipient |
| 2 | **dance** | past | Taffy |  |  |  |  | round G’way *= g'way* | vn waltz-51.5 «NP.theme V»: agent=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 124](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/10/124/)
- next →: [sentence 126](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/10/126/)
- ↑ back to [How the Alphabet Was Made](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/10/)