Just so stories, How the Leopard Got His Spots, sentence 120

Oh, now and then you will hear grown-ups say, ‘Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the Leopard his spots?’

Who acts: you, grown ups, Ethiopian · What happens: hear, grow, say, change · To what, where: skin · Speech: someone speaks here

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, grown ups, Ethiopian), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	Oh	oh	INTJ	_	8 hear	discourse
2	,	,	PUNCT	_	1 Oh	punct
3	now	now	ADV	PronType=Dem	8 hear	advmod
4	and	and	CCONJ	_	5 then	cc
5	then	then	ADV	PronType=Dem	3 now	conj
6	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	8 hear	nsubj
7	will	will	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	8 hear	aux
8	hear	hear	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
9	grown	grow	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	11 ups	amod
10	-	-	PUNCT	_	9 grown	punct
11	ups	up	NOUN	Number=Plur	12 say	nsubj
12	say	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	8 hear	ccomp
13	,	,	PUNCT	_	18 change	punct
14	‘	'	PUNCT	_	18 change	punct
15	Can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	18 change	aux
16	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	17 Ethiopian	det
17	Ethiopian	Ethiopian	PROPN	Number=Sing	18 change	nsubj
18	change	change	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	12 say	ccomp
19	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	20 skin	nmod:poss
20	skin	skin	NOUN	Number=Sing	18 change	obj
21	or	or	CCONJ	_	23 Leopard	cc
22	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	23 Leopard	det
23	Leopard	Leopard	PROPN	Number=Sing	20 skin	conj
24	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	25 spots	nmod:poss
25	spots	spot	NOUN	Number=Plur	18 change	obj
26	?	?	PUNCT	_	8 hear	punct
27	’	'	PUNCT	_	8 hear	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	roles by
1	hear	future	you		now	vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus
2	grow	participle				vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
3	say speech: assert	present	grown ups			vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
4	change	can	the Ethiopian	Ethiopian's skin or the Leopard		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.

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.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/5/120/