---
title: Go on,’ said Taffy, using her shark’s tooth. — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: Go on,’ said Taffy, using her shark’s tooth. Who acts: you, 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.
---

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# Just so stories, How the Alphabet Was Made, sentence 189

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Go on,’ said Taffy, using her shark’s tooth.

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**Who acts:** you, Taffy · **What happens:** go on, say, use · **To what, where:** tooth · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (you, Taffy), 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:pg2781:10:189
# text = Go on,’ said Taffy, using her shark’s tooth.
1	Go	go	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	on	on	ADV	RB	_	1	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	1	parataxis	_	_
6	Taffy	Taffy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	using	use	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	advcl	_	_
9	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	shark	shark	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’s	's	PART	POS	_	10	case	_	_
12	tooth	tooth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go on** | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn function-105.2.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Taffy |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **use** | gerund | Taffy *not said here* | Taffy's shark's tooth |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tooth=Patient |

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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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