---
title: Don’t you know how they stand on their heads rooting in the mud? — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: Don’t you know how they stand on their heads rooting in the mud? Who acts: you, ups, heads. A sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, How the Alphabet Was Made, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Just so stories, How the Alphabet Was Made, sentence 34

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Don’t you know how they stand on their heads rooting in the mud?

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**Who acts:** you, ups, heads · **What happens:** not do, know, stand, root · **To what, where:** heads, mud · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (you, ups, heads), 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:pg2781:10:34
# text = Don’t you know how they stand on their heads rooting in the mud?
1	Do	do	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	1	advmod	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	know	know	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	1	parataxis	_	_
5	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	7	advmod	_	_
6	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	stand	stand	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	ccomp	_	_
8	on	on	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	heads	head	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obl	_	_
11	rooting	root	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	10	acl	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	mud	mud	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **do** | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **know** | present | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 3 | **stand** | present | ups *= up* |  |  | ups's heads |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on head=Location |
| 4 | **root** | gerund | ups's heads *not said here* |  |  | the mud |  |  | vn rummage-35.5-1 «NP V PP.location PP.theme»: agent=Agent in mud=Location |

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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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