---
title: And it spoiled his temper, but it didn’t make the least difference t… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: And it spoiled his temper, but it didn’t make the least difference to the cake-crumbs. Who acts: fold, Rhinoceros. 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 30

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And it spoiled his temper, but it didn’t make the least difference to the cake-crumbs.

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**Who acts:** fold, Rhinoceros · **What happens:** spoil, not make, temper · **To what, where:** temper, least difference

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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 (fold, Rhinoceros), 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:pg2781:4:30
# text = And it spoiled his temper, but it didn’t make the least difference to the cake-crumbs.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	spoiled	spoil	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	temper	temper	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
9	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
11	make	make	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	least	least	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	14	amod	_	_
14	difference	difference	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
15	to	to	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
17	cake	cake	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	17	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	crumbs	crumb	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **spoil** | past | fold | Rhinoceros's temper |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **make** | past · do-support | fold | the least difference |  |  |  | to the cake crumbs | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.material V NP»: agent=Material difference=Product |
| 3 | **temper** |  | Rhinoceros |  |  |  |  |  | nom temper «feeling transitive»: poss=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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