---
title: ‘Oh,’ said the Ethiopian, ‘Baviaan didn’t mean spots in South Africa. — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Oh,’ said the Ethiopian, ‘Baviaan didn’t mean spots in South Africa. Who acts: Ethiopian, Baviaan. 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 93

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‘Oh,’ said the Ethiopian, ‘Baviaan didn’t mean spots in South Africa.

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**Who acts:** Ethiopian, Baviaan · **What happens:** say, not mean · **To what, where:** spots · **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, Baviaan), 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:pg2781:5:93
# text = ‘Oh,’ said the Ethiopian, ‘Baviaan didn’t mean spots in South Africa.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	5	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	Ethiopian	Ethiopian	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	Baviaan	Baviaan	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
11	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
13	mean	mean	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
14	spots	spot	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obj	_	_
15	in	in	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	South	South	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	17	compound	_	_
17	Africa	Africa	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	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 | **not** **mean** | past · do-support | Baviaan | spots |  |  |  | in South Africa | vn representation-110.1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Pivot spot=Theme in africa=Attribute |

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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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