---
title: And the Crocodile floundered into the water, making it all creamy wi… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: And the Crocodile floundered into the water, making it all creamy with great sweeps of his tail, and he pulled, and pulled, and pulled. Who acts: Crocodile. A sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, The Elephant’s Child, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Just so stories, The Elephant’s Child, sentence 49

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And the Crocodile floundered into the water, making it all creamy with great sweeps of his tail, and he pulled, and pulled, and pulled.

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**Who acts:** Crocodile · **What happens:** flounder, make, pull · **To what, where:** water

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This is a sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, The Elephant’s Child. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Crocodile), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg2781:223`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg2781:6:49
# text = And the Crocodile floundered into the water, making it all creamy with great sweeps of his tail, and he pulled, and pulled, and pulled.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	Crocodile	crocodile	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	floundered	flounder	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	into	into	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
9	making	make	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	obj	_	_
11	all	all	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	creamy	creamy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	xcomp	_	_
13	with	with	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	sweeps	sweep	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obl	_	_
16	of	of	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	18	nmod:poss	_	_
18	tail	tail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	_
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
21	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	22	nsubj	_	_
22	pulled	pull	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
23	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	25	punct	_	_
24	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	25	cc	_	_
25	pulled	pull	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	22	conj	_	_
26	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	28	punct	_	_
27	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	28	cc	_	_
28	pulled	pull	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	22	conj	_	_
29	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **flounder** | past | the Crocodile |  |  | the water |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **make** | gerund | the Crocodile *not said here* | water |  |  |  | with great sweeps of Crocodile's tail; creamy *property* | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset it=Product |
| 3 | **pull** | past | Crocodile |  |  |  |  |  | vn slide-11.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **pull** | past | Crocodile *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn slide-11.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 5 | **pull** | past | Crocodile *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn slide-11.2 «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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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