---
title: ‘But,’ said the Tortoise, ‘when you paw your meat you drop it into a… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘But,’ said the Tortoise, ‘when you paw your meat you drop it into a Tortoise with a scoop. 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 25

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‘But,’ said the Tortoise, ‘when you paw your meat you drop it into a Tortoise with a scoop.

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** say, paw, drop · **To what, where:** Tortoise, meat, paw · **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:pg2781:8:25
# text = ‘But,’ said the Tortoise, ‘when you paw your meat you drop it into a Tortoise with a scoop.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	Tortoise	tortoise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
9	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	12	advmod	_	_
11	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	paw	paw	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	_
13	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	meat	meat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	_
15	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
16	drop	drop	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	parataxis	_	_
17	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obj	_	_
18	into	into	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	Tortoise	tortoise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	_
21	with	with	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
22	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
23	scoop	scoop	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | the Tortoise |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent tortoise=Topic |
| 2 | **paw** |  | you | your meat |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **drop** | present | you | paw |  | a Tortoise |  | with a scoop | vn put\_direction-9.4 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent it=Theme into tortoise=Destination |

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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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