---
title: ‘It will take me half the day to mend this.’ — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘It will take me half the day to mend this.’ Who acts: It. 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 15

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‘It will take me half the day to mend this.’

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**Who acts:** It · **What happens:** take, mend · **To what, where:** me, this

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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 (It), 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:pg2781:9:15
# text = ‘It will take me half the day to mend this.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	take	take	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	_
6	half	half	DET	PDT	NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac|PronType=Ind	8	det:predet	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl:unmarked	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	mend	mend	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	advcl	_	_
11	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	’	'	SYM	NFP	_	4	discourse	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | future | It |  | me |  | day |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP ADVP»: agent=Instrument i=Destination |
| 2 | **mend** | to-infinitive |  | this |  |  |  |  | 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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