---
title: They were very polite to all their husbands, and said ‘Idiot!’ ever… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: They were very polite to all their husbands, and said ‘Idiot!’ ever so often. Who acts: people. 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/9/165/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Just so stories](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/) / [How the First Letter Was Written](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/9/) / 165

# Just so stories, How the First Letter Was Written, sentence 165

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
They were very polite to all their husbands, and said ‘Idiot!’ ever so often.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** people · **What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** Idiot · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (people), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg2781:9:165
# text = They were very polite to all their husbands, and said ‘Idiot!’ ever so often.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	very	very	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	polite	polite	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	8	det:predet	_	_
7	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	husbands	husband	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
12	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	Idiot	idiot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	13	punct	_	_
16	ever	ever	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	17	advmod	_	_
17	so	so	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	often	often	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | people |  |  |  |  | to people's husbands; polite *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | people *not said here* | Idiot |  |  |  | often *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent idiot=Topic |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 164](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/9/164/)
- next →: [sentence 166](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/9/166/)
- ↑ back to [How the First Letter Was Written](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/9/)