---
title: Don’t tell her I didn’t tell you,’ said Slow-Solid. — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: Don’t tell her I didn’t tell you,’ said Slow-Solid. Who acts: you, I. 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 57

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Don’t tell her I didn’t tell you,’ said Slow-Solid.

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**Who acts:** you, I · **What happens:** not tell, say · **To what, where:** Mummy, 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, I), 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:pg2781:8:57
# text = Don’t tell her I didn’t tell you,’ said Slow-Solid.
1	Do	do	AUX	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	3	advmod	_	_
3	tell	tell	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	iobj	_	_
5	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
6	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	8	advmod	_	_
8	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	ccomp	_	_
9	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	8	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	_
13	Slow	slow	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	Solid	solid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **tell** *speech: assert* | imperative · do-support | you *not said here* |  | Mummy |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent she=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **not** **tell** *speech: assert* | past · do-support | I |  | you |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent you=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  |  |  |  |  | solid *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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