---
title: ‘What have you been doing, Taffy?’ said Tegumai. — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What have you been doing, Taffy?’ said Tegumai. Who acts: you, Tegumai. 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 96

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‘What have you been doing, Taffy?’ said Tegumai.

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**Who acts:** you, Tegumai · **What happens:** do, say · **To what, where:** Taffy · **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, Tegumai), 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:pg2781:9:96
# text = ‘What have you been doing, Taffy?’ said Tegumai.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	6	obj	_	_
3	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	6	aux	_	_
6	doing	do	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	11	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	Taffy	Taffy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	Tegumai	Tegumai	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | present · perfect · progressive | you | Taffy |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Tegumai |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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