---
title: If she had spoken then, the Eldest Magician would have called me bac… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: If she had spoken then, the Eldest Magician would have called me back, and all this would never have happened. Who acts: girl, this. A sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, The Crab That Played With the Sea, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Just so stories, The Crab That Played With the Sea, sentence 104

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If she had spoken then, the Eldest Magician would have called me back, and all this would never have happened.

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**Who acts:** girl, this · **What happens:** speak, call back, not happen · **To what, where:** Eldest Magician · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, The Crab That Played With the Sea. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (girl, this), 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:pg2781:11:104
# text = If she had spoken then, the Eldest Magician would have called me back, and all this would never have happened.
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	4	mark	_	_
2	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	spoken	speak	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	12	advcl	_	_
5	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	Eldest	eld	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	9	amod	_	_
9	Magician	magician	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj:pass	_	_
10	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
11	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	aux	_	_
12	called	call	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
13	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	12	obj	_	_
14	back	back	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
17	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	22	det:predet	_	_
18	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	22	nsubj	_	_
19	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	22	aux	_	_
20	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	22	advmod	_	_
21	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	22	aux	_	_
22	happened	happen	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	12	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **speak** *speech: other* *a condition, not said to happen* | past · perfect | girl |  |  |  | then |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **call back** *speech: assert* | would · perfect · passive |  | the Eldest Magician |  |  |  |  | vn dub-29.3.2 «NP V NP NP»: subject=Theme i=Result |
| 3 | **not** **happen** | would · perfect | this |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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