---
title: ‘Let me run back to the Cave and ask Mummy to give it me.’ — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Let me run back to the Cave and ask Mummy to give it me.’ Who acts: you, me. 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 17

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‘Let me run back to the Cave and ask Mummy to give it me.’

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**Who acts:** you, me · **What happens:** let, run back, ask, give · **To what, where:** me, Mummy, Cave

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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, me), 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:pg2781:9:17
# text = ‘Let me run back to the Cave and ask Mummy to give it me.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Let	let	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	run	run	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	back	back	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
6	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	Cave	cave	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	ask	ask	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
11	Mummy	Mummy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	give	give	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	xcomp	_	_
14	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	_
15	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **let** | imperative | you *not said here* | me |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **run back** | infinitive | me *not said here* |  |  |  |  | to the Cave *result* | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V PP.result»: agent=Theme to cave=Result |
| 3 | **ask** *speech: ask* | infinitive | me *not said here* |  | Mummy |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S\_INF»: agent=Agent mummy=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 4 | **give** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | me *not said here* | Cave | me |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent i=Recipient it=Theme |

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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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