---
title: “If a cub can do it, there is nothing to fear.” — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “If a cub can do it, there is nothing to fear.” Who acts: cub, nothing. A sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 3, 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/pg236/3/18/)

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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 3, sentence 18

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“If a cub can do it, there is nothing to fear.”

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**Who acts:** cub, nothing · **What happens:** do, be, fear · **To what, where:** pot

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This is a sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (cub, nothing), 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:pg236:3:18
# text = “If a cub can do it, there is nothing to fear.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	cub	cub	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
5	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	10	expl	_	_
10	is	be	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	advcl	_	_
11	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	10	nsubj	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	fear	fear	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** *in a quote* | can | a cub | pot |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality |
| 2 | **be** *in a quote* | present | nothing |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **fear** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | nothing *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn marvel-31.3 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |

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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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