Kipling's word games: «Best Beloved», the 'Stute Fish, «Humph!» and the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo, sentence 16

Old sayings in the book: «a leopard cannot change its spots» (people do not change what they are like), «crocodile tears» (pretend sadness), «a month of Sundays» (a very long time) and «the long and the short of it» (the whole thing in a few words).

Who acts: leopard, people · What happens: not change, be · To what, where: spots · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of the lesson «Kipling's word games: «Best Beloved», the 'Stute Fish, «Humph!» and the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo» of the language 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, people), 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	Old	old	ADJ	Degree=Pos	2 sayings	amod
2	sayings	saying	NOUN	Number=Plur	root	root
3	in	in	ADP	_	5 book	case
4	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	5 book	det
5	book	book	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 sayings	nmod
6	:	:	PUNCT	_	7 «	punct
7	«	«	PUNCT	_	12 change	punct
8	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	9 leopard	det
9	leopard	leopard	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 change	nsubj
10	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	12 change	aux
11	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	12 change	advmod
12	change	change	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 sayings	parataxis
13	its	its	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	14 spots	nmod:poss
14	spots	spot	NOUN	Number=Plur	12 change	obj
15	»	»	PUNCT	_	12 change	punct
16	(	(	PUNCT	_	20 change	punct
17	people	people	NOUN	Number=Plur	20 change	nsubj
18	do	do	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	20 change	aux
19	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	20 change	advmod
20	change	change	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	12 change	parataxis
21	what	what	PRON	PronType=Int	20 change	obj
22	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	24 like	nsubj
23	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	24 like	cop
24	like	like	ADJ	Degree=Pos	21 what	discourse
25	)	)	PUNCT	_	20 change	punct
26	,	,	PUNCT	_	29 tears	punct
27	«	«	PUNCT	_	29 tears	punct
28	crocodile	crocodile	NOUN	Number=Sing	29 tears	compound
29	tears	tear	NOUN	Number=Plur	12 change	conj
30	»	»	PUNCT	_	29 tears	punct
31	(	(	PUNCT	_	33 sadness	punct
32	pretend	pretend	ADJ	Degree=Pos	33 sadness	amod
33	sadness	sadness	NOUN	Number=Sing	29 tears	appos
34	)	)	PUNCT	_	33 sadness	punct
35	,	,	PUNCT	_	38 month	punct
36	«	«	PUNCT	_	38 month	punct
37	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	38 month	det
38	month	month	NOUN	Number=Sing	20 change	parataxis
39	of	of	ADP	_	40 Sundays	case
40	Sundays	Sunday	PROPN	Number=Plur	38 month	nmod
41	»	»	PUNCT	_	38 month	punct
42	(	(	PUNCT	_	46 time	punct
43	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	46 time	det
44	very	very	ADV	_	45 long	advmod
45	long	long	ADJ	Degree=Pos	46 time	amod
46	time	time	NOUN	Number=Sing	38 month	parataxis
47	)	)	PUNCT	_	46 time	punct
48	and	and	CCONJ	_	49 «	cc
49	«	«	PUNCT	_	51 long	punct
50	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	51 long	det
51	long	long	ADJ	Degree=Pos	54 short	conj
52	and	and	CCONJ	_	54 short	cc
53	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	54 short	det
54	short	short	ADJ	Degree=Pos	12 change	parataxis
55	of	of	ADP	_	56 it	case
56	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	54 short	nmod
57	»	»	PUNCT	_	12 change	punct
58	(	(	PUNCT	_	61 thing	punct
59	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	61 thing	det
60	whole	whole	ADJ	Degree=Pos	61 thing	amod
61	thing	thing	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 change	parataxis
62	in	in	ADP	_	65 words	case
63	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	65 words	det
64	few	few	ADJ	Degree=Pos	65 words	amod
65	words	word	NOUN	Number=Plur	61 thing	nmod
66	)	)	PUNCT	_	61 thing	punct
67	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 sayings	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	not change in a quote	can	a leopard	leopard's spots		tree rules
2	not change	present · do-support	people			tree rules
3	is	present	people		like property	tree rules

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:language:042-kipling-s-word-games-best-beloved-stute-fish-humph-and-the-great-grey-green-greasy-limpopo.lesson:16.

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): R5-strong ×1, R6-punct-agree ×4, R7-rel-agree ×1. 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/language/42-kipling-s-word-games-best-beloved-stute-fish-humph-and-the-great-grey-green-greasy-limpopo/16/