---
title: He fumbled in his waist cloth for flint and steel, and stooped down… — The Jungle Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He fumbled in his waist cloth for flint and steel, and stooped down to singe Shere Khan’s whiskers. Who acts: Khanhiwara. 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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# The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 9, sentence 86

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He fumbled in his waist cloth for flint and steel, and stooped down to singe Shere Khan’s whiskers.

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**Who acts:** Khanhiwara · **What happens:** fumble, stoop down, singe · **To what, where:** waist cloth, whiskers

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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 (Khanhiwara), 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:pg236:9:86
# text = He fumbled in his waist cloth for flint and steel, and stooped down to singe Shere Khan’s whiskers.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	fumbled	fumble	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	in	in	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
4	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
5	waist	waist	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	_
6	cloth	cloth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
7	for	for	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	flint	flint	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	steel	steel	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	stooped	stoop	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
14	down	down	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	singe	singe	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	xcomp	_	_
17	Shere	Shere	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	20	nmod:poss	_	_
18	Khan	Khan	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	17	flat	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	’s	's	PART	POS	_	17	case	_	_
20	whiskers	whisker	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fumble** | past | Khanhiwara |  |  | Khanhiwara's waist cloth for flint and steel |  |  | vn rummage-35.5 «NP V PP.location PP.theme»: agent=Agent in cloth=Location |
| 2 | **stoop down** | past | Khanhiwara *not said here* |  |  |  |  | down *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **singe** | to-infinitive | Khanhiwara *not said here* | Shere's whiskers |  |  |  |  | vn remedy-45.7 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent whisker=Patient |

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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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