---
title: ‘And I told it you without saying a word, didn’t I?’ — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘And I told it you without saying a word, didn’t I?’ Who acts: I. 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 203

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‘And I told it you without saying a word, didn’t I?’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** tell, say, not do · **To what, where:** course, you, word · **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 (I), 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:pg2781:10:203
# text = ‘And I told it you without saying a word, didn’t I?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	iobj	_	_
7	without	without	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
8	saying	say	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
12	did	do	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	12	advmod	_	_
14	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | I | course | you |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent you=Recipient it=Topic |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | gerund | I *not said here* | a word |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent word=Topic |
| 3 | **not** **do** | past | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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