---
title: Once a day and once a night I return. — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: Once a day and once a night I return. Who acts: I. 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 68

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Once a day and once a night I return.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** return

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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 (I), 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:pg2781:11:68
# text = Once a day and once a night I return.
1	Once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	9	advmod	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl:unmarked	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
5	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	1	conj	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl:unmarked	_	_
8	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	return	return	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **return** | present | I |  |  |  | night | once *property* | vn escape-51.1-1 «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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