---
title: Then she said--‘I say, Daddy, it’s an awful nuisance that you and I… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: Then she said--‘I say, Daddy, it’s an awful nuisance that you and I don’t know how to write, isn’t it? Who acts: Taffy, I, you. 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 23

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Then she said--‘I say, Daddy, it’s an awful nuisance that you and I don’t know how to write, isn’t it?

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**Who acts:** Taffy, I, you · **What happens:** say, be, not know, write · **To what, where:** awful nuisance · **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 (Taffy, I, you), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg2781:453`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg2781:9:23
# text = Then she said--‘I say, Daddy, it’s an awful nuisance that you and I don’t know how to write, isn’t it?
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	_
2	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
5	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	_
6	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	say	say	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	parataxis	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
9	Daddy	daddy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	vocative	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	expl	_	_
12	’s	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
13	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	awful	awful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	nuisance	nuisance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	ccomp	_	_
16	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	22	mark	_	_
17	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	22	nsubj	_	_
18	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
19	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	17	conj	_	_
20	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	22	aux	_	_
21	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	22	advmod	_	_
22	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	csubj	_	_
23	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	25	advmod	_	_
24	to	to	PART	TO	_	25	mark	_	_
25	write	write	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	22	ccomp	_	_
26	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
27	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	parataxis	_	_
28	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	27	advmod	_	_
29	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	27	nsubj	_	_
30	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Taffy |  |  |  | then |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is a** | present |  | a awful nuisance |  |  |  | Daddy *vocative* | tree rules |
| 4 | **not** **know** | present · do-support | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 5 | **write** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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