---
title: You show up in this dark place like a bar of soap in a coal-scuttle.’ — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: You show up in this dark place like a bar of soap in a coal-scuttle.’ Who acts: You. 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 75

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You show up in this dark place like a bar of soap in a coal-scuttle.’

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**Who acts:** You · **What happens:** show up · **To what, where:** dark place

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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 (You), 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:pg2781:5:75
# text = You show up in this dark place like a bar of soap in a coal-scuttle.’
1	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	show	show	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	up	up	ADP	RP	_	2	compound:prt	_	_
4	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	det	_	_
6	dark	dark	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	place	place	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
8	like	like	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	bar	bar	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	soap	soap	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
15	coal	coal	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	scuttle	scuttle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **show up** | present | You |  |  | this dark place like a bar of soap in a coal scuttle |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in place=Location |

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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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