---
title: He could only gasp and point at Taffy. — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: He could only gasp and point at Taffy. Who acts: spear. 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 140

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He could only gasp and point at Taffy.

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**Who acts:** spear · **What happens:** gasp, point · **To what, where:** Taffy

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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 (spear), 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:pg2781:9:140
# text = He could only gasp and point at Taffy.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	only	only	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	gasp	gasp	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	point	point	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
7	at	at	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	Taffy	Taffy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **gasp** | could | spear |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **point** | infinitive | spear *not said here* |  |  | Taffy |  |  | vn wink-40.3.1 «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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