---
title: “How shall I know Sea Cow when I meet him?” said Kotick, sheering off. — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “How shall I know Sea Cow when I meet him?” said Kotick, sheering off. Who acts: Kotick. A sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 11, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/11/129/)

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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 11, sentence 129

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“How shall I know Sea Cow when I meet him?” said Kotick, sheering off.

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**Who acts:** Kotick · **What happens:** know, meet, say, sheer off · **To what, where:** Sea Cow, Vitch · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 11. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Kotick), 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:pg236:11:129
# text = “How shall I know Sea Cow when I meet him?” said Kotick, sheering off.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	_
3	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	ccomp	_	_
6	Sea	Sea	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	_
7	Cow	Cow	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	10	mark	_	_
9	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	meet	meet	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	_
11	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
14	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
15	Kotick	Kotick	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
17	sheering	sheer	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	14	advcl	_	_
18	off	off	ADP	RP	_	17	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **know** *in a quote* | shall | Kotick | Sea Cow |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer cow=Stimulus |
| 2 | **meet** *in a quote* | present | Kotick | Vitch |  |  |  |  | vn meet-36.3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Co-Agent |
| 3 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | Kotick |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 4 | **sheer off** | gerund | Kotick *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | 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:** «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.

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