---
title: Give me back my shell, O Eldest Magician, and then I will play your… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: Give me back my shell, O Eldest Magician, and then I will play your play.’ Who acts: you, I, your. 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 109

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Give me back my shell, O Eldest Magician, and then I will play your play.’

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**Who acts:** you, I, your · **What happens:** give back, play · **To what, where:** shell, me, play

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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 (you, I, your), 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:pg2781:11:109
# text = Give me back my shell, O Eldest Magician, and then I will play your play.’
1	Give	give	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	1	iobj	_	_
3	back	back	ADP	RP	_	1	compound:prt	_	_
4	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	shell	shell	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	O	o	INTJ	UH	_	9	discourse	_	_
8	Eldest	eld	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	9	amod	_	_
9	Magician	Magician	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
12	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	15	advmod	_	_
13	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
14	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	play	play	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	1	conj	_	_
16	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
17	play	play	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **give back** | imperative | you *not said here* | my shell | me |  |  | Eldest Magician *obl* | vn give-13.1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent i=Recipient shell=Theme |
| 2 | **play** | future | I | your play |  |  | then |  | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent play=Theme |
| 3 | **play** |  | your |  |  |  |  |  | nom play «communication intransitive»: poss=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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