---
title: ‘Las means breaking or finishing as well as ending, doesn’t it?’ — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Las means breaking or finishing as well as ending, doesn’t it?’ Who acts: Las. 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 231

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‘Las means breaking or finishing as well as ending, doesn’t it?’

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**Who acts:** Las · **What happens:** mean, break, finish, not do · **To what, where:** ending

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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 (Las), 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:pg2781:10:231
# text = ‘Las means breaking or finishing as well as ending, doesn’t it?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Las	Las	PROPN	NNP	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	breaking	break	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	3	xcomp	_	_
5	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	finishing	finish	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	4	conj	_	_
7	as	as	ADV	RB	ExtPos=CCONJ	10	cc	_	_
8	well	well	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	7	fixed	_	_
9	as	as	ADP	IN	_	7	fixed	_	_
10	ending	ending	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
12	does	do	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	12	advmod	_	_
14	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **mean** | present | Las |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **break** *not said to happen* | gerund | Las *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn hurt-40.8.3-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **finish** | gerund | Las *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |
| 4 | **not** **do** | present | Las *not said here* | ending |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality |

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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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