---
title: How was I to guess he would play with such dirt. — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: How was I to guess he would play with such dirt. Who acts: I, Baloo. A sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 4, 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/pg236/4/113/)

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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 4, sentence 113

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How was I to guess he would play with such dirt.

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**Who acts:** I, Baloo · **What happens:** be, play · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, Baloo), 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:pg236:4:113
# text = How was I to guess he would play with such dirt.
1	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	guess	guess	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
7	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	play	play	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	ccomp	_	_
9	with	with	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	such	such	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	dirt	dirt	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | I |  |  |  |  | guess *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **play** | would | Baloo |  |  |  |  | with such dirt | vn play-114.2-1 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent with dirt=Theme |

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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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