---
title: But it never grew any shorter, and, besides, it made him squint. — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: But it never grew any shorter, and, besides, it made him squint. Who acts: nose, Child. 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 61

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But it never grew any shorter, and, besides, it made him squint.

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**Who acts:** nose, Child · **What happens:** not grow, make, squint · **To what, where:** Child

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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 (nose, Child), 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:pg2781:6:61
# text = But it never grew any shorter, and, besides, it made him squint.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	grew	grow	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	any	any	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	shorter	short	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	4	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
10	besides	besides	INTJ	UH	_	13	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	made	make	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
14	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	_
15	squint	squint	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **grow** | past | nose |  |  |  |  | short *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **make** | past | nose | Child |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **squint** | infinitive | Child *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn wink-40.3.1 «NP V»: agent=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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