---
title: ‘I can’t draw all of a carp-fish, but I can draw something that mean… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I can’t draw all of a carp-fish, but I can draw something that means a carp-fish’s mouth. Who acts: I. A sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, How the Alphabet Was Made, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/10/33/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Just so stories](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/) / [How the Alphabet Was Made](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/10/) / 33

# Just so stories, How the Alphabet Was Made, sentence 33

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘I can’t draw all of a carp-fish, but I can draw something that means a carp-fish’s mouth.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** not draw, draw, mean · **To what, where:** all, something, mouth

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, How the Alphabet Was Made. 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.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg2781:608`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg2781:10:33
# text = ‘I can’t draw all of a carp-fish, but I can draw something that means a carp-fish’s mouth.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	_
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	draw	draw	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	5	obj	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
9	carp	carp	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	_
10	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	9	punct	_	_
11	fish	fish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
13	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
14	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
15	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
16	draw	draw	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
17	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	16	obj	_	_
18	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	19	nsubj	_	_
19	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	17	acl:relcl	_	_
20	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
21	carp	carp	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	compound	_	_
22	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	21	punct	_	_
23	fish	fish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	25	nmod:poss	_	_
24	’s	's	PART	POS	_	23	case	_	_
25	mouth	mouth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obj	_	_
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **draw** | can | I | all |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent all=Theme |
| 2 | **draw** | can | I | something |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent something=Theme |
| 3 | **mean** | present |  | a carp fish's mouth |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent mouth=Topic |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, Project Gutenberg book 2781 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 32](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/10/32/)
- next →: [sentence 34](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/10/34/)
- ↑ back to [How the Alphabet Was Made](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/10/)