---
title: I had better be more polite.’ — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: I had better be more polite.’ Who acts: I. 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 57

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I had better be more polite.’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** have, be

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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 (I), 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:pg2781:9:57
# text = I had better be more polite.’
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	6	amod	_	_
4	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	cop	_	_
5	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	6	advmod	_	_
6	polite	polite	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** | infinitive | I *not said here* |  |  |  |  | polite *property* | 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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