---
title: ‘Umm, said the Ethiopian, looking into the speckly-spickly shadows o… — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Umm, said the Ethiopian, looking into the speckly-spickly shadows of the aboriginal Flora-forest. Who acts: Ethiopian. 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 37

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‘Umm, said the Ethiopian, looking into the speckly-spickly shadows of the aboriginal Flora-forest.

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**Who acts:** Ethiopian · **What happens:** say, look, shadow · **To what, where:** aboriginal Flora forest · **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 (Ethiopian), 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:pg2781:5:37
# text = ‘Umm, said the Ethiopian, looking into the speckly-spickly shadows of the aboriginal Flora-forest.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Umm	umm	INTJ	UH	_	4	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	Ethiopian	Ethiopian	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	looking	look	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
9	into	into	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
11	speckly	speckly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	spickly	spickly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	shadows	shadow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
17	aboriginal	aboriginal	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
18	Flora	Flora	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	20	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	forest	forest	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the Ethiopian |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **look** | gerund | the Ethiopian *not said here* |  |  |  |  | into the spickly shadows of the aboriginal Flora forest | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent into shadow=Theme |
| 3 | **shadow** |  |  | the aboriginal Flora forest |  |  |  |  | nom shadow «state transitive»: of=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:** «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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