---
title: Then the Elephant’s Child felt his legs slipping, and he said throug… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: Then the Elephant’s Child felt his legs slipping, and he said through his nose, which was now nearly five feet long, ‘This is too butch for be!’ Who acts: Child, legs, nose, This. A sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, The Elephant’s Child, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of
---

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# Just so stories, The Elephant’s Child, sentence 51

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Then the Elephant’s Child felt his legs slipping, and he said through his nose, which was now nearly five feet long, ‘This is too butch for be!’

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**Who acts:** Child, legs, nose, This · **What happens:** feel, slip, say, be · **To what, where:** legs, nose · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Child, legs, nose, This), 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:pg2781:6:51
# text = Then the Elephant’s Child felt his legs slipping, and he said through his nose, which was now nearly five feet long, ‘This is too butch for be!’
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	6	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	Elephant	Elephant	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’s	's	PART	POS	_	3	case	_	_
5	Child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	felt	feel	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	legs	leg	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obj	_	_
9	slipping	slip	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	6	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
12	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
14	through	through	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	nose	nose	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	_
18	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	24	nsubj	_	_
19	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	24	cop	_	_
20	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	24	advmod	_	_
21	nearly	nearly	ADV	RB	_	22	advmod	_	_
22	five	five	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	23	nummod	_	_
23	feet	foot	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	24	obl:unmarked	_	_
24	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	30	punct	_	_
26	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	30	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
27	This	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	30	nsubj	_	_
28	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	30	cop	_	_
29	too	too	ADV	RB	_	30	advmod	_	_
30	butch	butch	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	ccomp	_	_
31	for	for	ADP	IN	_	32	case	_	_
32	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	30	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
33	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	30	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
34	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	30	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **feel** | past | the Elephant's Child | Child's legs |  |  | then |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **slip** | gerund | Child's legs *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1-1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Child |  |  | Child's nose |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **is** | past | Child's nose |  |  |  | now | five feet *obl:unmarked*; long *property* | tree rules |
| 5 | **is** | present | This |  |  |  |  | butch *property* | tree rules |

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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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