---
title: And do you quite understand, or shall I ‘splain again?’ — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: And do you quite understand, or shall I ‘splain again?’ Who acts: you, 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 87

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And do you quite understand, or shall I ‘splain again?’

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**Who acts:** you, I · **What happens:** understand, splain · **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 (you, 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:pg2781:9:87
# text = And do you quite understand, or shall I ‘splain again?’
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	understand	understand	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
8	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
9	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	splain	splain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	ccomp	_	_
12	again	again	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **understand** | present · do-support | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **splain** | shall | I |  |  |  | again |  | 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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