---
title: He could scratch himself anywhere he pleased with any leg, front or… — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He could scratch himself anywhere he pleased with any leg, front or back, that he chose to use. Who acts: 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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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 13, sentence 52

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He could scratch himself anywhere he pleased with any leg, front or back, that he chose to use.

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**Who acts:** Tikki · **What happens:** scratch, choose, use · **To what, where:** Tikki

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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 (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:pg236:13:52
# text = He could scratch himself anywhere he pleased with any leg, front or back, that he chose to use.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	scratch	scratch	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	3	obj	_	_
5	anywhere	anywhere	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	7	advmod	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	pleased	pleased	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	ccomp	_	_
8	with	with	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	10	det	_	_
10	leg	leg	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
12	front	front	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	_
13	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	back	back	ADV	RB	_	10	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
16	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
17	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
18	chose	choose	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
19	to	to	PART	TO	_	20	mark	_	_
20	use	use	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **scratch** | could | Tikki | Tikki |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent himself=Theme |
| 2 | **choose** | past | Tikki |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **use** | to-infinitive | Tikki *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1 «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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