---
title: ‘Or if you prefer stripes, think of Zebra. — Just so stories · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Or if you prefer stripes, think of Zebra. 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 97

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‘Or if you prefer stripes, think of Zebra.

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** prefer, think · **To what, where:** stripes

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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:pg2781:5:97
# text = ‘Or if you prefer stripes, think of Zebra.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
3	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	prefer	prefer	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	stripes	stripe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	think	think	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	Zebra	Zebra	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **prefer** | present | you | stripes |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer stripe=Stimulus |
| 2 | **think** *speech: other* | infinitive | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  | of Zebra | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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