---
title: Most of them had taught their elephants that trick when they were bo… — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Most of them had taught their elephants that trick when they were boys. Who acts: elephants, men. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/16/92/)

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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 16, sentence 92

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Most of them had taught their elephants that trick when they were boys.

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**Who acts:** elephants, men · **What happens:** teach, trick, be · **To what, where:** Most, elephants, boys

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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 (elephants, men), 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:pg236:16:92
# text = Most of them had taught their elephants that trick when they were boys.
1	Most	most	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	5	nsubj:pass	_	_
2	of	of	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
3	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	1	nmod	_	_
4	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	taught	teach	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
6	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	elephants	elephant	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	_
8	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	9	nsubj	_	_
9	trick	trick	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	acl:relcl	_	_
10	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	13	advmod	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
13	boys	boy	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **teach** *speech: other* | past · perfect · passive |  | Most of men | men's elephants |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: subject=Recipient elephant=Topic |
| 2 | **trick** | present | men's elephants |  |  |  |  |  | vn trick-59.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is a** | past | men *= man* | boys |  |  |  |  | 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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