---
title: He buttoned it up with the three buttons, and it tickled like cake c… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: He buttoned it up with the three buttons, and it tickled like cake crumbs in bed. Who acts: Rhinoceros, water. 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 26

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He buttoned it up with the three buttons, and it tickled like cake crumbs in bed.

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**Who acts:** Rhinoceros, water · **What happens:** button up, tickle · **To what, where:** water

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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 (Rhinoceros, water), 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:pg2781:4:26
# text = He buttoned it up with the three buttons, and it tickled like cake crumbs in bed.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	buttoned	button	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	up	up	ADP	RP	_	2	compound:prt	_	_
5	with	with	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	8	nummod	_	_
8	buttons	button	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	tickled	tickle	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
13	like	like	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	cake	cake	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	compound	_	_
15	crumbs	crumb	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obl	_	_
16	in	in	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	bed	bed	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **button up** | past | Rhinoceros | water |  |  |  | with the three buttons | vn tape-22.4 «NP V NP PP.co-patient PP.instrument»: agent=Agent it=Patient with button=Instrument |
| 2 | **tickle** | past | water |  |  |  |  | like cake crumbs in bed | vn tingle-40.8.2 «NP V»: agent=Patient |

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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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