---
title: He was really nothing but skin and bones, and it made him very downh… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: He was really nothing but skin and bones, and it made him very downhearted to think of it. Who acts: Wolf, skin. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Wolf and the House Dog, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Wolf and the House Dog, sentence 2

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He was really nothing but skin and bones, and it made him very downhearted to think of it.

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**Who acts:** Wolf, skin · **What happens:** be, make, think · **To what, where:** nothing, Wolf

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Wolf and the House Dog. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Wolf, skin), 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:pg19994:107:2
# text = He was really nothing but skin and bones, and it made him very downhearted to think of it.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	really	really	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	0	root	_	_
5	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	skin	skin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	bones	bone	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	made	make	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
13	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	obj	_	_
14	very	very	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	downhearted	downhearted	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	xcomp	_	_
16	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
17	think	think	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	xcomp	_	_
18	of	of	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
19	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | Wolf | nothing |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **make** | past | skin | Wolf |  |  |  | downhearted *property* | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.material V NP»: agent=Material he=Product |
| 3 | **think** *speech: other* | to-infinitive | Wolf *not said here* |  |  |  |  | of skin | vn focus-87.1-1 «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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