---
title: ‘Well, you have been quick!’ said Taffy. — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Well, you have been quick!’ said Taffy. Who acts: you, Taffy. 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 118

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‘Well, you have been quick!’ said Taffy.

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**Who acts:** you, Taffy · **What happens:** be, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (you, Taffy), 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:pg2781:9:118
# text = ‘Well, you have been quick!’ said Taffy.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Well	well	INTJ	UH	_	10	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
5	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	7	cop	_	_
7	quick	quick	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	Taffy	Taffy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present · perfect | you |  |  |  |  | quick *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Taffy |  |  |  |  |  | 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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