---
title: Standing at a safe distance from the cave, he inquired politely afte… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: Standing at a safe distance from the cave, he inquired politely after the Lion's health. Who acts: Fox. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Old Lion and the Fox, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Old Lion and the Fox, sentence 5

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Standing at a safe distance from the cave, he inquired politely after the Lion's health.

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**Who acts:** Fox · **What happens:** stand, inquire

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Old Lion and the Fox. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Fox), 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:pg19994:100:5
# text = Standing at a safe distance from the cave, he inquired politely after the Lion's health.
1	Standing	stand	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	11	advcl	_	_
2	at	at	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	safe	safe	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	distance	distance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	_
6	from	from	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	cave	cave	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	inquired	inquire	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	politely	politely	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
13	after	after	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	Lion	Lion	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	17	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	's	's	PART	POS	_	15	case	_	_
17	health	health	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand** | gerund | Fox *not said here* |  |  |  |  | at a safe distance from the cave | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent at distance=Location |
| 2 | **inquire** *speech: other* | past | Fox |  |  |  | after the Lion's health | politely *property* | vn inquire-37.1.2 «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:** «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, Project Gutenberg book 19994 (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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