---
title: He was so astonished that he fell three times backward over his own… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: He was so astonished that he fell three times backward over his own painted tail without stopping. Who acts: Painted. A sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, The Beginning of the Armadillos, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Just so stories, The Beginning of the Armadillos, sentence 134

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He was so astonished that he fell three times backward over his own painted tail without stopping.

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**Who acts:** Painted · **What happens:** be, fall, paint, stop · **To what, where:** own painted tail

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This is a sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, The Beginning of the Armadillos. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Painted), 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:pg2781:8:134
# text = He was so astonished that he fell three times backward over his own painted tail without stopping.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	so	so	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	astonished	astonished	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	fell	fall	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	ccomp	_	_
8	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	9	nummod	_	_
9	times	time	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl:unmarked	_	_
10	backward	backward	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
11	over	over	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
13	own	own	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
14	painted	paint	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	15	amod	_	_
15	tail	tail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
16	without	without	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
17	stopping	stop	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	7	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | Painted |  |  |  |  | astonished *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **fall** | past | Painted |  |  | Painted's own painted tail |  | backward *property* | vn occur-48.3 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme over tail=Location |
| 3 | **paint** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn image\_impression-25.1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **stop** | gerund | Painted *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=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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