---
title: The Elephant’s Child sat there for three days waiting for his nose t… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: The Elephant’s Child sat there for three days waiting for his nose to shrink. Who acts: Child, three days. 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 60

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The Elephant’s Child sat there for three days waiting for his nose to shrink.

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**Who acts:** Child, three days · **What happens:** sit, wait, shrink

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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, three days), 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:pg2781:6:60
# text = The Elephant’s Child sat there for three days waiting for his nose to shrink.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Elephant	Elephant	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	’s	's	PART	POS	_	2	case	_	_
4	Child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
7	for	for	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	9	nummod	_	_
9	days	day	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	_
10	waiting	wait	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	acl	_	_
11	for	for	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	nose	nose	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	shrink	shrink	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit** | past | the Elephant's Child |  |  | there | day |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **wait** | gerund | three days *not said here* |  |  |  |  | for Child's nose | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **shrink** | to-infinitive | three days *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn bend-45.2 «NP.patient 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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