Just so stories, The Elephant’s Child, sentence 5

He asked his tall aunt, the Ostrich, why her tail-feathers grew just so, and his tall aunt the Ostrich spanked him with her hard, hard claw.

Who acts: Elephant, tail feathers, tall aunt · What happens: ask, grow, spank · To what, where: tall aunt, Elephant

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 (Elephant, tail feathers, tall aunt), 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	He	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 asked	nsubj
2	asked	ask	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	5 aunt	nmod:poss
4	tall	tall	ADJ	Degree=Pos	5 aunt	amod
5	aunt	aunt	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 asked	obj
6	,	,	PUNCT	_	8 Ostrich	punct
7	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	8 Ostrich	det
8	Ostrich	Ostrich	PROPN	Number=Sing	5 aunt	appos
9	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 grew	punct
10	why	why	ADV	PronType=Int	15 grew	advmod
11	her	her	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	14 feathers	nmod:poss
12	tail	tail	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 feathers	compound
13	-	-	PUNCT	_	12 tail	punct
14	feathers	feather	NOUN	Number=Plur	15 grew	nsubj
15	grew	grow	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 asked	conj
16	just	just	ADV	_	17 so	advmod
17	so	so	ADV	_	15 grew	advmod
18	,	,	PUNCT	_	25 spanked	punct
19	and	and	CCONJ	_	25 spanked	cc
20	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	22 aunt	nmod:poss
21	tall	tall	ADJ	Degree=Pos	22 aunt	amod
22	aunt	aunt	NOUN	Number=Sing	25 spanked	nsubj
23	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	24 Ostrich	det
24	Ostrich	Ostrich	PROPN	Number=Sing	22 aunt	appos
25	spanked	spank	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 asked	conj
26	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	25 spanked	obj
27	with	with	ADP	_	32 claw	case
28	her	her	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	32 claw	nmod:poss
29	hard	hard	ADJ	Degree=Pos	32 claw	amod
30	,	,	PUNCT	_	29 hard	punct
31	hard	hard	ADJ	Degree=Pos	32 claw	amod
32	claw	claw	NOUN	Number=Sing	25 spanked	obl
33	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 asked	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	other	roles by
1	ask speech: ask	past	Elephant		Elephant's tall aunt		vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent aunt=Recipient
2	grow	past	Africa's tail feathers				vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
3	spank	past	Elephant's tall aunt	Elephant		with Africa's hard hard claw	vn spank-18.3 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent he=Patient with claw=Instrument

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/pg2781/6/5/