---
title: Teddy’s mother might just as well have petted Teddy for playing in t… — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Teddy’s mother might just as well have petted Teddy for playing in the dust. Who acts: mother. A sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 14, 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/pg236/14/21/)

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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 14, sentence 21

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Teddy’s mother might just as well have petted Teddy for playing in the dust.

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**Who acts:** mother · **What happens:** pet, play · **To what, where:** Teddy, dust

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This is a sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 14. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mother), 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:pg236:14:21
# text = Teddy’s mother might just as well have petted Teddy for playing in the dust.
1	Teddy	Teddy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	’s	's	PART	POS	_	1	case	_	_
3	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
4	might	might	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
5	just	just	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
6	as	as	ADV	RB	ExtPos=CCONJ	9	cc	_	_
7	well	well	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	6	fixed	_	_
8	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	petted	pet	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
10	Teddy	Teddy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
11	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
12	playing	play	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	9	advcl	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	dust	dust	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pet** | might · perfect | Teddy's mother | Teddy |  |  |  |  | vn marry-36.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent teddy=Co-Agent |
| 2 | **play** | gerund | Teddy's mother *not said here* |  |  | the dust |  |  | vn performance-26.7-1 «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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