---
title: What am I to do?” said Rikki-tikki-tavi. — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: What am I to do?” said Rikki-tikki-tavi. Who acts: I, Rikki. 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/pg236/14/71/)

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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 14, sentence 71

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What am I to do?” said Rikki-tikki-tavi.

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**Who acts:** I, Rikki · **What happens:** do, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (I, Rikki), 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:pg236:14:71
# text = What am I to do?” said Rikki-tikki-tavi.
1	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	5	obj	_	_
2	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	Rikki	Rikki	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	tikki	tikki	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	list	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	tavi	tavi	X	FW	Foreign=Yes	11	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | present | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past | Rikki |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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