---
title: ‘I don’t like this old lady one little bit,’ said Stickly-Prickly, u… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I don’t like this old lady one little bit,’ said Stickly-Prickly, under the shadow of a large leaf. Who acts: 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/8/75/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Just so stories](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/) / [The Beginning of the Armadillos](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/8/) / 75

# Just so stories, The Beginning of the Armadillos, sentence 75

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘I don’t like this old lady one little bit,’ said Stickly-Prickly, under the shadow of a large leaf.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** not like, say, shadow · **To what, where:** old lady, large leaf · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg2781:8:75
# text = ‘I don’t like this old lady one little bit,’ said Stickly-Prickly, under the shadow of a large leaf.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	like	like	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	ccomp	_	_
6	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	8	det	_	_
7	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	lady	lady	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
9	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	11	nummod	_	_
10	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	bit	bit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
14	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
15	Stickly	stickly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	Prickly	prickly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
19	under	under	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	shadow	shadow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	ccomp	_	_
22	of	of	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
23	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	25	det	_	_
24	large	large	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	25	amod	_	_
25	leaf	leaf	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **like** | present · do-support | I | this old lady |  |  |  | one little bit *obl:unmarked* | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot lady=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  |  |  |  |  | prickly *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **shadow** |  |  | a large leaf |  |  |  |  | nom shadow «state transitive»: of=patient |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 74](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/8/74/)
- next →: [sentence 76](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/8/76/)
- ↑ back to [The Beginning of the Armadillos](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/8/)