---
title: ‘You told me to drop into the turbid Amazon and be drowned,’ said Sl… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘You told me to drop into the turbid Amazon and be drowned,’ said Slow-Solid. Who acts: You. A sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, The Beginning of the Armadillos, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Just so stories, The Beginning of the Armadillos, sentence 143

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‘You told me to drop into the turbid Amazon and be drowned,’ said Slow-Solid.

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**Who acts:** You · **What happens:** tell, drop, drown, say · **To what, where:** me, turbid Amazon · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, The Beginning of the Armadillos. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (You), 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:pg2781:8:143
# text = ‘You told me to drop into the turbid Amazon and be drowned,’ said Slow-Solid.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	ccomp	_	_
4	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	iobj	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	drop	drop	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
7	into	into	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	turbid	turbid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	Amazon	Amazon	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
12	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	aux:pass	_	_
13	drowned	drown	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
16	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
17	Slow	slow	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	17	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	Solid	solid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	16	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | You |  | me |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent i=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **drop** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | You *not said here* |  |  |  |  | into the turbid Amazon *result* | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V PP.result»: agent=Theme into amazon=Result |
| 3 | **drown** | infinitive · passive | You *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP» |
| 4 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  |  |  |  |  | solid *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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