Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 4: How the Leopard got his Spots, part 2 (One, two, three, and where's your breakfast?), sentence 20
The old saying "a leopard cannot change its spots" means that people do not change what they are really like; Kipling jokes that it only exists because the Leopard did it once.
Who acts: leopard, old saying, people, Kipling, saying · What happens: not change, mean, joke, exist, do · To what, where: spots, saying · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of the lesson «Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 4: How the Leopard got his Spots, part 2 (One, two, three, and where's your breakfast?)» of the books course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (leopard, old saying, people, Kipling), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.
The tree
The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)
| # | word | lemma | UPOS | features | head | relation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 3 saying | det |
| 2 | old | old | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 saying | amod |
| 3 | saying | saying | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 means | nsubj |
| 4 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 9 change | punct |
| 5 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 leopard | det |
| 6 | leopard | leopard | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 change | nsubj |
| 7 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 9 change | aux |
| 8 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 9 change | advmod |
| 9 | change | change | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 3 saying | ccomp |
| 10 | its | its | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 11 spots | nmod:poss |
| 11 | spots | spot | NOUN | Number=Plur | 9 change | obj |
| 12 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 9 change | punct |
| 13 | means | mean | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 14 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 18 change | mark |
| 15 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 18 change | nsubj |
| 16 | do | do | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 18 change | aux |
| 17 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 18 change | advmod |
| 18 | change | change | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 13 means | ccomp |
| 19 | what | what | PRON | PronType=Int | 18 change | obj |
| 20 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 23 like | nsubj |
| 21 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 23 like | cop |
| 22 | really | really | ADV | _ | 23 like | advmod |
| 23 | like | like | ADP | _ | 19 what | acl:relcl |
| 24 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 26 jokes | punct |
| 25 | Kipling | Kipling | PROPN | Number=Sing | 26 jokes | nsubj |
| 26 | jokes | joke | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 13 means | parataxis |
| 27 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 30 exists | mark |
| 28 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 30 exists | nsubj |
| 29 | only | only | ADV | _ | 30 exists | advmod |
| 30 | exists | exist | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 26 jokes | ccomp |
| 31 | because | because | SCONJ | _ | 34 did | mark |
| 32 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 33 Leopard | det |
| 33 | Leopard | leopard | PROPN | Number=Sing | 34 did | nsubj |
| 34 | did | do | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 30 exists | advcl |
| 35 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 34 did | obj |
| 36 | once | once | ADV | NumForm=Word NumType=Mult | 34 did | advmod |
| 37 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 13 means | punct |
Pragmatics
- form
- statement
- act
- assert
- voice
- narrator
- polarity
- none
- teacher
- changed voice=narrator
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not change in a quote | can | a leopard | saying's spots | vn dress-41.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent spot=Patient | ||||
| 2 | mean | present | the old saying | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 3 | not change | present · do-support | people | vn dress-41.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Patient | |||||
| 4 | joke speech: other | present | Kipling | tree rules | |||||
| 5 | exist | present | saying | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||||
| 6 | do | past | the Leopard | saying | once property | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality |
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.
Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, mova-school-agreed-en.conllu) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence school:books:078-justso-leopard-spots-2.lesson:20.
The tree: Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R6-punct-agree ×3, R7-rel-agree ×3, R8-pos-agree ×2. The frames are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (prag) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.
See the release 0.4.
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/20/