---
title: Really, my Tegumai, you’re no better than my Taffy.’ — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: Really, my Tegumai, you’re no better than my Taffy.’ Who acts: 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 9

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Really, my Tegumai, you’re no better than my Taffy.’

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** 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 (you), 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:pg2781:9:9
# text = Really, my Tegumai, you’re no better than my Taffy.’
1	Really	really	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
3	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	Tegumai	Tegumai	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	’re	be	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
8	no	no	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	7	xcomp	_	_
10	than	than	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	Taffy	Taffy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **does** | present | you |  |  |  |  | good *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=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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