---
title: Presently she began to giggle, and her Daddy said, ‘Don’t be silly,… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: Presently she began to giggle, and her Daddy said, ‘Don’t be silly, child.’ Who acts: Taffy, Daddy. 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 3

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Presently she began to giggle, and her Daddy said, ‘Don’t be silly, child.’

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**Who acts:** Taffy, Daddy · **What happens:** begin, giggle, say, not be · **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 (Taffy, Daddy), 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:pg2781:10:3
# text = Presently she began to giggle, and her Daddy said, ‘Don’t be silly, child.’
1	Presently	presently	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	giggle	giggle	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	Daddy	daddy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
12	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	16	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	Do	do	AUX	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	16	advmod	_	_
15	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	cop	_	_
16	silly	silly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
18	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **begin** | past | Taffy |  |  |  |  | presently *property* | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **giggle** | to-infinitive | Taffy *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Taffy's Daddy |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **not** **is** | infinitive · do-support |  |  |  |  |  | silly *property* | tree rules |

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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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