---
title: ‘I’m not meaning rude, really and truly,’ said Taffy. — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I’m not meaning rude, really and truly,’ said Taffy. Who acts: I, 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/pg2781/10/21/)

<!-- 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/) / 21

# Just so stories, How the Alphabet Was Made, sentence 21

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘I’m not meaning rude, really and truly,’ said Taffy.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** I, Taffy · **What happens:** not mean, say · **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 (I, 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:pg2781:10:21
# text = ‘I’m not meaning rude, really and truly,’ said Taffy.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	’m	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	meaning	mean	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	13	ccomp	_	_
6	rude	rude	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	really	really	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	truly	truly	ADV	RB	_	8	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	Taffy	Taffy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **mean** | present · progressive | I |  |  |  |  | rude *property* | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Taffy |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

<!-- .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 20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/10/20/)
- next →: [sentence 22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/10/22/)
- ↑ back to [How the Alphabet Was Made](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/10/)