---
title: And the Eldest Magician said, ‘How wise are little children who spea… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: And the Eldest Magician said, ‘How wise are little children who speak truth! Who acts: Eldest Magician, wise little children. 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 59

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And the Eldest Magician said, ‘How wise are little children who speak truth!

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**Who acts:** Eldest Magician, wise little children · **What happens:** say, be, speak · **To what, where:** wise little children, truth · **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 (Eldest Magician, wise little children), 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:pg2781:11:59
# text = And the Eldest Magician said, ‘How wise are little children who speak truth!
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	Eldest	eld	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	4	amod	_	_
4	Magician	Magician	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	9	advmod	_	_
9	wise	wise	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
10	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
11	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	_
13	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	14	nsubj	_	_
14	speak	speak	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	acl:relcl	_	_
15	truth	truth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the Eldest Magician |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** | present |  | wise little children |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **speak** *speech: other* | present | wise little children | truth |  |  |  |  | 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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