---
title: That is why they nip you with their scissors, and it serves you right! — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: That is why they nip you with their scissors, and it serves you right! Who acts: That, babies, armour. 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 151

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That is why they nip you with their scissors, and it serves you right!

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**Who acts:** That, babies, armour · **What happens:** be, nip, serve · **To what, where:** you

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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 (That, babies, armour), 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:pg2781:11:151
# text = That is why they nip you with their scissors, and it serves you right!
1	That	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	3	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
3	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Rel	0	root	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	nip	nip	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	advcl:relcl	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	_
7	with	with	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	scissors	scissors	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	serves	serve	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
14	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	_
15	right	right	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	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 | **is** | present | That |  |  |  |  | why *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **nip** | present | babies *= baby* | you |  |  |  | with babies's scissors | vn run-51.3.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Initial\_Location you=Theme |
| 3 | **serve** | present | armour | you |  |  |  | right *property* | vn masquerade-29.6-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent you=Attribute |

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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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