---
title: He was wearing the blue canvas breeches when he walked out on the sh… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: He was wearing the blue canvas breeches when he walked out on the shingle. Who acts: Sailor, blue canvas. A sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, How the Whale Got His Throat, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Just so stories, How the Whale Got His Throat, sentence 41

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He was wearing the blue canvas breeches when he walked out on the shingle.

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**Who acts:** Sailor, blue canvas · **What happens:** wear, breech, walk out · **To what, where:** shingle

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This is a sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, How the Whale Got His Throat. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Sailor, blue canvas), 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:pg2781:2:41
# text = He was wearing the blue canvas breeches when he walked out on the shingle.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	wearing	wear	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	blue	blue	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	canvas	canvas	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	breeches	breech	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
8	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	10	advmod	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	walked	walk	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	ccomp	_	_
11	out	out	ADP	RP	_	10	compound:prt	_	_
12	on	on	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	shingle	shingle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wear** | past · progressive | Sailor |  |  |  |  |  | vn wipe\_manner-10.4.1-1 «NP V PP-Conative»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **breech** | present | the blue canvas |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **walk out** | past | Sailor |  |  | the shingle |  |  | vn resign-10.11 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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