---
title: I have no gift of words, but I speak the truth. — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: I have no gift of words, but I speak the truth. Who acts: I. 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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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 2, sentence 8

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I have no gift of words, but I speak the truth.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** have, speak, gift · **To what, where:** gift, truth, words · **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 (I), 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:pg236:2:8
# text = I have no gift of words, but I speak the truth.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	4	det	_	_
4	gift	gift	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	words	word	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	speak	speak	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	truth	truth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | present | I | no gift of words |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent gift=Patient |
| 2 | **speak** *speech: other* | present | I | the truth |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **gift** |  |  | words |  |  |  |  | nom gift «possession transitive»: of=patient |

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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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