---
title: “Let them breathe, Akela,” he said, holding up his hand. — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Let them breathe, Akela,” he said, holding up his hand. Who acts: vines, Mowgli. A sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 9, 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/pg236/9/38/)

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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 9, sentence 38

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“Let them breathe, Akela,” he said, holding up his hand.

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**Who acts:** vines, Mowgli · **What happens:** let, breathe, say, hold up · **To what, where:** vines, hand · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (vines, Mowgli), 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:pg236:9:38
# text = “Let them breathe, Akela,” he said, holding up his hand.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Let	let	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
3	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	breathe	breathe	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
6	Akela	Akela	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
12	holding	hold	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	10	advcl	_	_
13	up	up	ADP	RP	_	12	compound:prt	_	_
14	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	hand	hand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **let** *in a quote* | infinitive |  | vines *= vine* |  |  |  | Akela *obl* | tree rules |
| 2 | **breathe** *in a quote* | infinitive | vines *= vine* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn breathe-40.1.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Mowgli |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 4 | **hold up** | gerund | Mowgli *not said here* | Mowgli's hand |  |  |  |  | vn support-15.3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot hand=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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