---
title: “They were such very bad dreams,” said the camel. — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “They were such very bad dreams,” said the camel. Who acts: mules, such bad dreams. A sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 18, 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/pg236/18/135/)

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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 18, sentence 135

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“They were such very bad dreams,” said the camel.

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**Who acts:** mules, such bad dreams · **What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** such bad dreams, camel · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 18. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mules, such bad dreams), 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:pg236:18:135
# text = “They were such very bad dreams,” said the camel.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
4	such	such	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
5	very	very	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	bad	bad	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	dreams	dream	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	camel	camel	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | past | mules *= mule* | such bad dreams |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | such bad dreams | the camel |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent camel=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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