---
title: What made you tell that awful fib to your wife?--for doubtless she i… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: What made you tell that awful fib to your wife?--for doubtless she is your wife.’ Who acts: you, stamping. A sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, The Butterfly That Stamped, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/13/54/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Just so stories](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/) / [The Butterfly That Stamped](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/13/) / 54

# Just so stories, The Butterfly That Stamped, sentence 54

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
What made you tell that awful fib to your wife?--for doubtless she is your wife.’

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you, stamping · **What happens:** make, tell, be · **To what, where:** you, awful fib, wife · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (you, stamping), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg2781:13:54
# text = What made you tell that awful fib to your wife?--for doubtless she is your wife.’
1	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	2	nsubj	_	_
2	made	make	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	det	_	_
6	awful	awful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	fib	fib	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
8	to	to	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	for	for	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	doubtless	doubtless	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	_
15	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
16	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
17	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	18	nmod:poss	_	_
18	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	18	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **make** | past |  | you |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | infinitive | you *not said here* | that awful fib | your wife |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent fib=Topic to wife=Recipient |
| 3 | **is a** | present | stamping | your wife |  |  |  | for doubtless | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 53](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/13/53/)
- next →: [sentence 55](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/13/55/)
- ↑ back to [The Butterfly That Stamped](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/13/)