---
title: He did not know much of white men, but Petersen Sahib was the greate… — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He did not know much of white men, but Petersen Sahib was the greatest white man in the world to him. Who acts: Toomai, Petersen. A sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 16, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 16, sentence 44

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He did not know much of white men, but Petersen Sahib was the greatest white man in the world to him.

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**Who acts:** Toomai, Petersen · **What happens:** not know, be · **To what, where:** much, greatest white man, Toomai, world

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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 (Toomai, Petersen), 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:pg236:16:44
# text = He did not know much of white men, but Petersen Sahib was the greatest white man in the world to him.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	much	much	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	obj	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
10	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
11	Petersen	Petersen	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	17	nsubj	_	_
12	Sahib	Sahib	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	flat	_	_
13	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
15	greatest	great	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	17	amod	_	_
16	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	_
18	in	in	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	world	world	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nmod	_	_
21	to	to	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **know** | past · do-support | Toomai | much |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer much=Stimulus |
| 2 | **is a** | past | Petersen | the greatest white man | Toomai | the world |  |  | tree rules |

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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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