---
title: So the Elephant’s Child went home across Africa frisking and whiskin… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: So the Elephant’s Child went home across Africa frisking and whisking his trunk. Who acts: 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 80

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So the Elephant’s Child went home across Africa frisking and whisking his trunk.

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**Who acts:** Child · **What happens:** go, frisk, whisk · **To what, where:** Africa, trunk

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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), 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:pg2781:6:80
# text = So the Elephant’s Child went home across Africa frisking and whisking his trunk.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	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	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	home	home	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
8	across	across	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	Africa	Africa	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
10	frisking	frisk	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	advcl	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	whisking	whisk	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	10	conj	_	_
13	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	trunk	trunk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** | past | the Elephant's Child |  |  | Africa |  | home *property* | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme across africa=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **frisk** | gerund | the Elephant's Child *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn investigate-35.4 «NP V NP.location»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **whisk** | gerund | the Elephant's Child *not said here* | Child's trunk |  |  |  |  | vn shake-22.3-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent trunk=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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