---
title: ‘Are you sure of what your Mummy told you?’ said Slow-and-Solid Tort… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Are you sure of what your Mummy told you?’ said Slow-and-Solid Tortoise. Who acts: you, Mummy. 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 19

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‘Are you sure of what your Mummy told you?’ said Slow-and-Solid Tortoise.

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**Who acts:** you, Mummy · **What happens:** be, tell, say · **To what, where:** you · **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, Mummy), 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:pg2781:8:19
# text = ‘Are you sure of what your Mummy told you?’ said Slow-and-Solid Tortoise.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	sure	sure	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	ccomp	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	4	ccomp	_	_
7	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	Mummy	Mummy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
9	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	acl:relcl	_	_
10	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	9	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	Slow	slow	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	16	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	Solid	solid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	Tortoise	tortoise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | you |  |  |  |  | sure *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | your Mummy |  | you |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent you=Recipient |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  |  |  |  |  | slow *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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