---
title: They stood on the marble steps one hundred abreast and shouted, ‘Wha… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: They stood on the marble steps one hundred abreast and shouted, ‘What is our trouble? Who acts: babies, marble. A sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, The Butterfly That Stamped, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Just so stories, The Butterfly That Stamped, sentence 134

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They stood on the marble steps one hundred abreast and shouted, ‘What is our trouble?

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**Who acts:** babies, marble · **What happens:** stand, step, shout, be · **To what, where:** one hundred, trouble

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This is a sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, The Butterfly That Stamped. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (babies, marble), 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:pg2781:13:134
# text = They stood on the marble steps one hundred abreast and shouted, ‘What is our trouble?
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	on	on	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	marble	marble	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	steps	step	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
7	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	8	compound	_	_
8	hundred	hundred	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	6	obj	_	_
9	abreast	abreast	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	shouted	shout	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
13	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	17	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	17	nsubj	_	_
15	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	_
16	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
17	trouble	trouble	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand** | past | babies *= baby* |  |  |  |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **step** | present | the marble | one hundred |  |  |  | abreast *property* | vn run-51.3.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Initial\_Location hundred=Theme |
| 3 | **shout** *speech: express* | past | babies *= baby* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **is a** | present |  | our trouble |  |  |  |  | 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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