---
title: “Something is coming uphill,” said Mother Wolf, twitching one ear. — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Something is coming uphill,” said Mother Wolf, twitching one ear. Who acts: Something, Mother Wolf. A sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 1, 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/pg236/1/76/)

<!-- 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/) / [The Jungle Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/) / [The Jungle Book, part 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/1/) / 76

# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 1, sentence 76

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“Something is coming uphill,” said Mother Wolf, twitching one ear.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Something, Mother Wolf · **What happens:** come, say, twitch · **To what, where:** one ear · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Something, Mother Wolf), 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:pg236:1:76
# text = “Something is coming uphill,” said Mother Wolf, twitching one ear.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	4	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	coming	come	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	ccomp	_	_
5	uphill	uphill	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	Mother	Mother	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	compound	_	_
10	Wolf	Wolf	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
12	twitching	twitch	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	advcl	_	_
13	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	14	nummod	_	_
14	ear	ear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** *in a quote* | present · progressive | Something |  |  |  |  | uphill *property* | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Mother Wolf |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **twitch** | gerund | Mother Wolf *not said here* | one ear |  |  |  |  | vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent ear=Patient |

<!-- .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:** «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, Project Gutenberg book 236 (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 75](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/1/75/)
- next →: [sentence 77](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/1/77/)
- ↑ back to [The Jungle Book, part 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/1/)