---
title: We only want la-la,’ said Taffy. — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: We only want la-la,’ said Taffy. 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.
---

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# Just so stories, How the Alphabet Was Made, sentence 227

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We only want la-la,’ said Taffy.

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**Who acts:** We, Taffy · **What happens:** want, say · **To what, where:** la · **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 (We, 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:pg2781:10:227
# text = We only want la-la,’ said Taffy.
1	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	only	only	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
3	want	want	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	ccomp	_	_
4	la	la	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	la	la	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	Taffy	Taffy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **want** | present | We | la and la |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot la=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Taffy |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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