---
title: He had mended his spear and was carefully waving it to and fro. — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: He had mended his spear and was carefully waving it to and fro. Who acts: 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 97

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He had mended his spear and was carefully waving it to and fro.

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**Who acts:** Tegumai · **What happens:** mend, wave, fro · **To what, where:** spear, road

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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 (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:pg2781:9:97
# text = He had mended his spear and was carefully waving it to and fro.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	mended	mend	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	spear	spear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
7	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
8	carefully	carefully	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	waving	wave	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	3	conj	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	obj	_	_
11	to	to	ADP	IN	_	9	fixed	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	fro	fro	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **mend** | past · perfect | Tegumai | Tegumai's spear |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **wave** | past · progressive | Tegumai *not said here* | road |  |  |  | carefully *property* | vn wink-40.3.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Patient |
| 3 | **fro** | infinitive | Tegumai *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | 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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