---
title: ONCE upon a most early time was a Neolithic man. — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ONCE upon a most early time was a Neolithic man. Who acts: early time. A sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, How the First Letter Was Written, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Just so stories, How the First Letter Was Written, sentence 1

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ONCE upon a most early time was a Neolithic man.

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**Who acts:** early time · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, How the First Letter Was Written. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (early time), 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:pg2781:9:1
# text = ONCE upon a most early time was a Neolithic man.
1	ONCE	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	0	root	_	_
2	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
4	most	most	ADV	RBS	Degree=Sup	5	advmod	_	_
5	early	early	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
7	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	Neolithic	neolithic	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | a early time |  |  |  |  | upon a Neolithic man | tree rules |

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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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