---
title: The moonlight showed it all iron gray, except where some elephants s… — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The moonlight showed it all iron gray, except where some elephants stood upon it, and their shadows were inky black. Who acts: moonlight, elephants, shadows. A sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 17, 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/pg236/17/59/)

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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 17, sentence 59

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The moonlight showed it all iron gray, except where some elephants stood upon it, and their shadows were inky black.

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**Who acts:** moonlight, elephants, shadows · **What happens:** show, stand, be, shadow · **To what, where:** blade

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This is a sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 17. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (moonlight, elephants, shadows), 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:pg236:17:59
# text = The moonlight showed it all iron gray, except where some elephants stood upon it, and their shadows were inky black.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	moonlight	moonlight	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	showed	show	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	7	det	_	_
6	iron	iron	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	gray	gray	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	except	except	ADP	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
10	where	where	ADV	WRB	PronType=Rel	13	advmod	_	_
11	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	12	det	_	_
12	elephants	elephant	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nsubj	_	_
13	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
14	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
18	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	19	nmod:poss	_	_
19	shadows	shadow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	22	nsubj	_	_
20	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	22	cop	_	_
21	inky	inky	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
22	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **show** | past | the moonlight | blade |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent it=Recipient gray=Topic |
| 2 | **stand** | past | some elephants |  |  | blade |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent upon it=Location |
| 3 | **is** | past | elephants's shadows |  |  |  |  | black *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **shadow** |  | elephants *= elephant* |  |  |  |  |  | nom shadow «state transitive»: poss=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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