---
title: I said that your mother said that you were to scoop me out of my she… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: I said that your mother said that you were to scoop me out of my shell,’ said Slow-and-Solid. Who acts: I, mother, you, Slow. 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 49

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I said that your mother said that you were to scoop me out of my shell,’ said Slow-and-Solid.

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**Who acts:** I, mother, you, Slow · **What happens:** say, scoop · **To what, where:** me, shell · **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 (I, mother, you, Slow), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg2781:351`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg2781:8:49
# text = I said that your mother said that you were to scoop me out of my shell,’ said Slow-and-Solid.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	19	ccomp	_	_
3	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
4	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	ccomp	_	_
7	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
8	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
9	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	scoop	scoop	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	ccomp	_	_
12	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	_
13	out	out	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	fixed	_	_
15	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	shell	shell	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
18	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
19	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
20	Slow	Slow	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	19	nsubj	_	_
21	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	24	punct	_	_
22	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	24	cc	_	_
23	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	24	punct	_	_
24	Solid	Solid	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	20	conj	_	_
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	19	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 | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | your mother |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **scoop** | past | you | me |  | my shell |  |  | vn funnel-9.3 «NP V NP PP.trajectory»: agent=Agent i=Theme out shell=Trajectory |
| 4 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Slow and Solid |  |  |  |  |  | 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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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