---
title: But the sea cows did not answer because Sea Cow cannot talk. — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But the sea cows did not answer because Sea Cow cannot talk. Who acts: sea cows, Sea Cow. 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/pg236/12/55/)

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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 12, sentence 55

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But the sea cows did not answer because Sea Cow cannot talk.

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**Who acts:** sea cows, Sea Cow · **What happens:** not answer, not talk

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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: who acts (sea cows, Sea Cow), 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:pg236:12:55
# text = But the sea cows did not answer because Sea Cow cannot talk.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	sea	sea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	cows	cow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
5	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	7	advmod	_	_
7	answer	answer	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
8	because	because	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
9	Sea	Sea	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	compound	_	_
10	Cow	cow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
11	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
13	talk	talk	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **answer** *speech: assert* | past · do-support | the sea cows |  |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **not** **talk** | can | Sea Cow |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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