---
title: In those days it buttoned underneath with three buttons and looked l… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: In those days it buttoned underneath with three buttons and looked like a waterproof. Who acts: skin. A sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Just so stories, How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin, sentence 17

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In those days it buttoned underneath with three buttons and looked like a waterproof.

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**Who acts:** skin · **What happens:** button, look

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This is a sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (skin), 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:pg2781:4:17
# text = In those days it buttoned underneath with three buttons and looked like a waterproof.
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	those	that	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	3	det	_	_
3	days	day	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	buttoned	button	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	underneath	underneath	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
7	with	with	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	9	nummod	_	_
9	buttons	button	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
12	like	like	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	waterproof	waterproof	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **button** | past | skin |  |  |  | day | with three buttons; underneath *property* | vn tape-22.4 «NP V NP PP.co-patient PP.instrument»: agent=Agent with button=Instrument |
| 2 | **look** | past | skin *not said here* |  |  |  |  | like a waterproof | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |

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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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