---
title: “Don’t the knives hurt?” said the young mule. — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Don’t the knives hurt?” said the young mule. Who acts: young mule. A sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 19, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/19/62/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Jungle Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/) / [The Jungle Book, part 19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/19/) / 62

# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 19, sentence 62

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“Don’t the knives hurt?” said the young mule.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** young mule · **What happens:** not do, hurt, say · **To what, where:** knives · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 19. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (young mule), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg236:19:62
# text = “Don’t the knives hurt?” said the young mule.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	2	advmod	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	knives	knife	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
6	hurt	hurt	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	mule	mule	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **do** *in a quote* | infinitive |  | the knives |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent knife=Eventuality |
| 2 | **hurt** *in a quote* | participle |  | the knives *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |
| 3 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | the young mule |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 61](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/19/61/)
- next →: [sentence 63](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/19/63/)
- ↑ back to [The Jungle Book, part 19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/19/)