---
title: “They never do what they set out to do. — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “They never do what they set out to do. Who acts: eyes. A sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 5, 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/pg236/5/17/)

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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 5, sentence 17

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“They never do what they set out to do.

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**Who acts:** eyes · **What happens:** not do, set out, do

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This is a sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (eyes), 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:pg236:5:17
# text = “They never do what they set out to do.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	do	do	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	obj	_	_
6	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	set	set	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	acl:relcl	_	_
8	out	out	ADP	RP	_	7	compound:prt	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **do** *in a quote* | present | eyes *= eye* |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **set out** *in a quote* | past | eyes *= eye* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **do** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | eyes *= eye* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: 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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