---
title: ‘You couldn’t have done that with a mere-smear nose. — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘You couldn’t have done that with a mere-smear nose. Who acts: You. 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 65

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‘You couldn’t have done that with a mere-smear nose.

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**Who acts:** You · **What happens:** not do · **To what, where:** that

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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 (You), 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:pg2781:6:65
# text = ‘You couldn’t have done that with a mere-smear nose.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
5	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	aux	_	_
6	done	do	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
7	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	obj	_	_
8	with	with	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
10	mere	mere	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	smear	smear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	_
13	nose	nose	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **do** | could · perfect | You | that |  |  |  | with a smear nose | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent that=Eventuality |

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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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