---
title: The big things answered by bowing and waving their flippers like the… — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The big things answered by bowing and waving their flippers like the Frog Footman. A sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 12, 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/pg236/12/42/)

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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 12, sentence 42

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The big things answered by bowing and waving their flippers like the Frog Footman.

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**What happens:** answer, bow, wave · **To what, where:** big things, flippers

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This is a sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 12. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg236:12:42
# text = The big things answered by bowing and waving their flippers like the Frog Footman.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	0	root	_	_
4	answered	answer	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	acl	_	_
5	by	by	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
6	bowing	bow	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	waving	wave	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	conj	_	_
9	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	flippers	flipper	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	_
11	like	like	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	Frog	Frog	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	_
14	Footman	Footman	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | participle |  | the big things *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **bow** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn acquiesce-95.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **wave** | gerund |  | things's flippers |  |  |  | like the Frog Footman | vn wink-40.3.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent flipper=Patient |

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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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