---
title: But if they straggle to pick flowers or hunt lizards, they are somet… — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But if they straggle to pick flowers or hunt lizards, they are sometimes carried off. Who acts: cattle. A sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 8, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 8, sentence 64

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But if they straggle to pick flowers or hunt lizards, they are sometimes carried off.

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**Who acts:** cattle · **What happens:** straggle, pick, hunt, carry off · **To what, where:** flowers, lizards, cattle

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This is a sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 8. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (cattle), 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:pg236:8:64
# text = But if they straggle to pick flowers or hunt lizards, they are sometimes carried off.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
2	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	4	mark	_	_
3	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	straggle	straggle	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	advcl	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	pick	pick	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
7	flowers	flower	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obj	_	_
8	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	hunt	hunt	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
10	lizards	lizard	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
12	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj:pass	_	_
13	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	aux:pass	_	_
14	sometimes	sometimes	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	15	advmod	_	_
15	carried	carry	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
16	off	off	ADP	RP	_	15	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **straggle** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | cattle |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **pick** | to-infinitive | cattle *not said here* | flowers |  |  |  |  | vn chew-39.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent flower=Patient |
| 3 | **hunt** | present | cattle *not said here* | lizards |  |  |  |  | vn hunt-35.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent lizard=Theme |
| 4 | **carry off** | present · passive |  | cattle |  |  |  | sometimes *property* | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: subject=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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