---
title: “The child speaks truth,” said he. — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “The child speaks truth,” said he. Who acts: child, Machua. 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/pg236/18/24/)

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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 18, sentence 24

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“The child speaks truth,” said he.

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**Who acts:** child, Machua · **What happens:** speak, say · **To what, where:** truth · **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 (child, Machua), 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:pg236:18:24
# text = “The child speaks truth,” said he.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	speaks	speak	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	_
5	truth	truth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **speak** *speech: other* *in a quote* | present | the child | truth |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Machua |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=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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- ← previous: [sentence 23](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/18/23/)
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- ↑ back to [The Jungle Book, part 18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/18/)