---
title: Was that what you meant to tell me?’ — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: Was that what you meant to tell me?’ Who acts: you. 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 201

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Was that what you meant to tell me?’

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** be, mean, tell · **To what, where:** me · **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), 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:pg2781:10:201
# text = Was that what you meant to tell me?’
1	Was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
2	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
3	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	0	root	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	meant	mean	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	acl:relcl	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	_
8	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **mean** | past | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | you *not said here* |  | me |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=Recipient |

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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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