---
title: ‘Can’t curl, but can swim-- Slow-Solid, that’s him! — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Can’t curl, but can swim-- Slow-Solid, that’s him! Who acts: that. 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 88

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‘Can’t curl, but can swim-- Slow-Solid, that’s him!

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**Who acts:** that · **What happens:** not curl, swim, be · **To what, where:** Jaguar

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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 (that), 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:pg2781:8:88
# text = ‘Can’t curl, but can swim-- Slow-Solid, that’s him!
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	curl	curl	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
6	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
7	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	swim	swim	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	Slow	slow	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	Solid	solid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
14	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	16	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’s	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	16	cop	_	_
16	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **curl** | can |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn coil-9.6-1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **swim** | can |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **is a** | present | that | Jaguar |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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