---
title: ‘Excellent!’ said Stickly-Prickly; ‘but I shouldn’t do any more just… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Excellent!’ said Stickly-Prickly; ‘but I shouldn’t do any more just now. 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.
---

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# Just so stories, The Beginning of the Armadillos, sentence 99

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‘Excellent!’ said Stickly-Prickly; ‘but I shouldn’t do any more just now.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** say, not do · **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), 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:pg2781:8:99
# text = ‘Excellent!’ said Stickly-Prickly; ‘but I shouldn’t do any more just now.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Excellent	excellent	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	Stickly	stickly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	Prickly	prickly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	15	punct	_	_
10	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
12	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
13	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	15	advmod	_	_
15	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	ccomp	_	_
16	any	any	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
17	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	15	advmod	_	_
18	just	just	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
19	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	15	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	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 |  |  |  |  |  | prickly *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **not** **do** | should | I |  |  |  | now |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: 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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