---
title: Job 20:16 (JPS 1917) — He shall suck the poison of asps; the viper's tongue shall slay him. · tree and pragmatics
description: He shall suck the poison of asps; the viper's tongue shall slay him. Who acts: head, tongue. Job 20:16 in JPS 1917 with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Job 20:16 · JPS 1917

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He shall suck the poison of asps; the viper's tongue shall slay him.

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**Who acts:** head, tongue · **What happens:** suck, slay · **To what, where:** poison, head

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This is Job 20:16 · JPS 1917 in the English of the Jewish Publication Society's 1917 translation, from Mova's open Bible corpus. The page gives the sentence's syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies, parsed by Mova and checked by a teacher model — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (head, tongue), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it. The original of the verse links back to its own tree and to the Targum.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = jps:JOB:513
# text = He shall suck the poison of asps; the viper's tongue shall slay him.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	suck	suck	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	poison	poison	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	asps	asp	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nmod	_	_
8	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	14	punct	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	viper	viper	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod:poss	_	_
11	's	's	PART	POS	_	10	case	_	_
12	tongue	tongue	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
13	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
14	slay	slay	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	parataxis	_	_
15	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	obj	_	_
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: narrate
- voice: narrator
- polarity: neg
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **suck** | shall | head | the poison of asps |  |  |  |  | vn wipe\_manner-10.4.1-1 «NP V NP.source»: agent=Agent poison=Source |
| 2 | **slay** | shall | the viper's tongue | head |  |  |  |  | vn murder-42.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Patient |

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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.

## The Hebrew of this verse {#hebrew}

<!-- .vhe dir=rtl lang=hbo -->
רֹאשׁ־פְּתָנִ֥ים יִינָ֑ק תַּֽ֝הַרְגֵ֗הוּ לְשׁ֣וֹן אֶפְעֶֽה׃

[Job 20:16: the Hebrew tree, its pragmatics and the Targum →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/ketuvim/JOB.20.16/)

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**Source.** The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text, Jewish Publication Society, 1917, from eBible.org: public domain. Sentence `jps:JOB:513` of Mova's parse database.

**The tree and the speech act** come from Mova's cycle: the small model's draft, read by a large model as teacher, passed by Mova's gates (Elamur Cosmic License). **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the chapter read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence of the chapter.

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