Just so stories, The Elephant’s Child, sentence 48
Then the Elephant’s Child sat back on his little haunches, and pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and his nose began to stretch.
Who acts: Child, nose · What happens: sit back, pull, begin, stretch · To what, where: little haunches
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, nose), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.
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
The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)
| # | word | lemma | UPOS | features | head | relation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Then | then | ADV | PronType=Dem | 6 sat | advmod |
| 2 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 3 Elephant | det |
| 3 | Elephant | Elephant | PROPN | Number=Sing | 5 Child | nmod:poss |
| 4 | ’s | 's | PART | _ | 3 Elephant | case |
| 5 | Child | child | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 sat | nsubj |
| 6 | sat | sit | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 7 | back | back | ADV | _ | 6 sat | advmod |
| 8 | on | on | ADP | _ | 11 haunches | case |
| 9 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 11 haunches | nmod:poss |
| 10 | little | little | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 11 haunches | amod |
| 11 | haunches | haunch | NOUN | Number=Plur | 6 sat | obl |
| 12 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 14 pulled | punct |
| 13 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 14 pulled | cc |
| 14 | pulled | pull | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 sat | parataxis |
| 15 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 17 pulled | punct |
| 16 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 17 pulled | cc |
| 17 | pulled | pull | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 14 pulled | conj |
| 18 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 20 pulled | punct |
| 19 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 20 pulled | cc |
| 20 | pulled | pull | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 17 pulled | conj |
| 21 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 25 began | punct |
| 22 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 25 began | cc |
| 23 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 24 nose | nmod:poss |
| 24 | nose | nose | NOUN | Number=Sing | 25 began | nsubj |
| 25 | began | begin | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 sat | conj |
| 26 | to | to | PART | _ | 27 stretch | mark |
| 27 | stretch | stretch | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 25 began | xcomp |
| 28 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 6 sat | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | sit back | past | the Elephant's Child | Child's little haunches | then | vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on haunch=Location | |||
| 2 | pull | past | vn slide-11.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||||
| 3 | pull | past | vn slide-11.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||||
| 4 | pull | past | vn slide-11.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||||
| 5 | begin | past | Child's nose | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | |||||
| 6 | stretch | to-infinitive | Child's nose not said here | vn bend-45.2 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |
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.
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.
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/6/48/