---
title: Then the Whale stood up on his tail and said, ‘I’m hungry.’ — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: Then the Whale stood up on his tail and said, ‘I’m hungry.’ Who acts: Whale, I. 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 5

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Then the Whale stood up on his tail and said, ‘I’m hungry.’

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**Who acts:** Whale, I · **What happens:** stand up, say, be · **To what, where:** tail · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Whale, I), 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:pg2781:2:5
# text = Then the Whale stood up on his tail and said, ‘I’m hungry.’
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	Whale	whale	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	up	up	ADP	RP	_	4	compound:prt	_	_
6	on	on	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	tail	tail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
12	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	’m	be	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	ccomp	_	_
15	hungry	hungry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand up** | past | the Whale |  |  | Whale's tail | then |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on tail=Location |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the Whale *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **be** | present | I |  |  |  |  | hungry *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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