---
title: Perhaps we’ve forgotten what they were like.’ — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: Perhaps we’ve forgotten what they were like.’ Who acts: Eland. A sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, How the Leopard Got His Spots, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Just so stories, How the Leopard Got His Spots, sentence 33

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Perhaps we’ve forgotten what they were like.’

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**Who acts:** Eland · **What happens:** forget, be · **To what, where:** we · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, How the Leopard Got His Spots. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Eland), 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:pg2781:5:33
# text = Perhaps we’ve forgotten what they were like.’
1	Perhaps	perhaps	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
2	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	’ve	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux:pass	_	_
4	forgotten	forget	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
5	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	8	obj	_	_
6	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
7	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
8	like	like	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **forget** | present · passive |  | we |  |  |  | perhaps *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | past | Eland |  |  |  |  | like *property* | tree rules |

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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:** «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, Project Gutenberg book 2781 (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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