---
title: Petersen Sahib had spent eighteen years in catching elephants, and h… — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Petersen Sahib had spent eighteen years in catching elephants, and he had only once before found such a dance-place. Who acts: Petersen. 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/pg236/18/22/)

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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 18, sentence 22

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Petersen Sahib had spent eighteen years in catching elephants, and he had only once before found such a dance-place.

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**Who acts:** Petersen · **What happens:** spend, catch, have, find · **To what, where:** elephants, dance place

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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 (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:pg236:18:22
# text = Petersen Sahib had spent eighteen years in catching elephants, and he had only once before found such a dance-place.
1	Petersen	Petersen	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
2	Sahib	Sahib	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	1	flat	_	_
3	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	spent	spend	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	eighteen	eighteen	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	6	nummod	_	_
6	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
7	in	in	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
8	catching	catch	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
9	elephants	elephant	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
12	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
14	only	only	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	13	obl	_	_
16	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
17	found	find	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	13	advcl	_	_
18	such	such	DET	PDT	PronType=Ind	22	det:predet	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
20	dance	dance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	20	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	place	place	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	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 | **spend** | past · perfect | Petersen |  |  |  | year |  | vn consume-66-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **catch** | gerund | Petersen *not said here* | elephants |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent elephant=Theme |
| 3 | **have** | past | Petersen |  |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **find** | participle | Petersen *not said here* | such dance place |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent place=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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