---
title: ‘Well, calling names won’t catch dinner, said the Ethiopian. — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Well, calling names won’t catch dinner, said the Ethiopian. Who acts: calling, 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 79

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‘Well, calling names won’t catch dinner, said the Ethiopian.

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**Who acts:** calling, Ethiopian · **What happens:** call, not catch, say · **To what, where:** names, dinner · **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 (calling, 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:pg2781:5:79
# text = ‘Well, calling names won’t catch dinner, said the Ethiopian.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Well	well	INTJ	UH	_	8	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	calling	call	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	csubj	_	_
5	names	name	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
6	wo	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	8	advmod	_	_
8	catch	catch	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
9	dinner	dinner	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	Ethiopian	Ethiopian	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **call** | gerund |  | names |  |  |  |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent name=Recipient |
| 2 | **not** **catch** | future | calling | dinner |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent dinner=Theme |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the Ethiopian |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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