---
title: “But why--but why should any wish to kill me?” said Mowgli. — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “But why--but why should any wish to kill me?” said Mowgli. Who acts: Mowgli. A sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 2, 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/pg236/2/111/)

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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 2, sentence 111

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“But why--but why should any wish to kill me?” said Mowgli.

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**Who acts:** Mowgli · **What happens:** kill, say · **To what, where:** Mowgli · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Mowgli), 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:pg236:2:111
# text = “But why--but why should any wish to kill me?” said Mowgli.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
3	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
6	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	9	advmod	_	_
7	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
8	any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	9	det	_	_
9	wish	wish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	kill	kill	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	acl	_	_
12	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
15	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	advcl:relcl	_	_
16	Mowgli	Mowgli	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **kill** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | Mowgli *not said here* | Mowgli |  |  |  |  | vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | Mowgli |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=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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