---
title: So an egg or a stone will do for that.’ — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: So an egg or a stone will do for that.’ Who acts: egg. 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 82

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So an egg or a stone will do for that.’

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**Who acts:** egg · **What happens:** do

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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 (egg), 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:pg2781:10:82
# text = So an egg or a stone will do for that.’
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
2	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	egg	egg	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
4	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	stone	stone	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	conj	_	_
7	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
9	for	for	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	’	'	SYM	NFP	_	8	discourse	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | future | a egg or a stone |  |  |  |  | for that | 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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