---
title: Rikki-tikki knew better than to waste time in staring. — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Rikki-tikki knew better than to waste time in staring. Who acts: Rikki tikki. A sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 13, 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/pg236/13/125/)

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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 13, sentence 125

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Rikki-tikki knew better than to waste time in staring.

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**Who acts:** Rikki tikki · **What happens:** know, waste, stare · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 13. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Rikki tikki), 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:pg236:13:125
# text = Rikki-tikki knew better than to waste time in staring.
1	Rikki	Rikki	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	tikki	tikki	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	knew	know	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	better	well	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	4	advmod	_	_
6	than	than	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	waste	waste	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	ccomp	_	_
9	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
10	in	in	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
11	staring	stare	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **know** | past | Rikki tikki |  |  |  |  | well *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **waste** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  | time |  | vn destroy-44 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **stare** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: 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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