---
title: “The Government may pay for elephants, but they belong to us mahouts. — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “The Government may pay for elephants, but they belong to us mahouts. Who acts: Government, feet. A sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 16, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/16/3/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Jungle Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/) / [The Jungle Book, part 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/16/) / 3

# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 16, sentence 3

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“The Government may pay for elephants, but they belong to us mahouts.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Government, feet · **What happens:** pay, belong · **To what, where:** us

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 16. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Government, feet), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg236:16:3
# text = “The Government may pay for elephants, but they belong to us mahouts.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	Government	government	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	pay	pay	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	for	for	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	elephants	elephant	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	belong	belong	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
12	to	to	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	obl	_	_
14	mahouts	mahout	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nmod:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pay** *in a quote* | may | the Government |  |  |  |  | for elephants | vn pay-68-1 «NP V NP PP.theme»: agent=Agent for elephant=Theme |
| 2 | **belong** *in a quote* | present | feet *= foot* |  | us |  |  |  | vn attend-107.4-2 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/16/2/)
- next →: [sentence 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/16/4/)
- ↑ back to [The Jungle Book, part 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/16/)