---
title: Legs are legs, and you needn’t alter ‘em so far as I am concerned. — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: Legs are legs, and you needn’t alter ‘em so far as I am concerned. Who acts: Legs, you, I. A sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, The Sing-song of Old Man Kangaroo, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/7/56/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Just so stories](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/) / [The Sing-song of Old Man Kangaroo](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/7/) / 56

# Just so stories, The Sing-song of Old Man Kangaroo, sentence 56

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Legs are legs, and you needn’t alter ‘em so far as I am concerned.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Legs, you, I · **What happens:** be, not alter · **To what, where:** legs, em

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, The Sing-song of Old Man Kangaroo. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Legs, you, I), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg2781:7:56
# text = Legs are legs, and you needn’t alter ‘em so far as I am concerned.
1	Legs	leg	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
2	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
3	legs	leg	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
7	need	need	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	9	advmod	_	_
9	alter	alter	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	acl:relcl	_	_
10	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	em	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	obl	_	_
12	so	so	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	far	far	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	9	advmod	_	_
14	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
15	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
16	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	_
17	concerned	concerned	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | Legs | legs |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **alter** | present | you | em *= they* |  |  |  | far *property* | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent leg=Patient |
| 3 | **is** | present | I |  |  |  |  | concerned *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 55](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/7/55/)
- next →: [sentence 57](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/7/57/)
- ↑ back to [The Sing-song of Old Man Kangaroo](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/7/)