---
title: ‘Shall I ask the Man here to cut you with kris? — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Shall I ask the Man here to cut you with kris? 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 86

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‘Shall I ask the Man here to cut you with kris?

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** ask, cut, kris · **To what, where:** Man, 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 (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:pg2781:11:86
# text = ‘Shall I ask the Man here to cut you with kris?
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	ask	ask	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	Man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	here	here	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	cut	cut	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	advcl	_	_
10	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	9	obj	_	_
11	with	with	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	kris	kris	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | shall | I |  | the Man | here |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent man=Recipient |
| 2 | **cut** | to-infinitive | I *not said here* | you |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset you=Product |
| 3 | **kris** | infinitive | I *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | 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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