---
title: But what's the difference?" replied the Dog. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: But what's the difference?" replied the Dog. Who acts: difference. 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 26

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But what's the difference?" replied the Dog.

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**Who acts:** difference · **What happens:** be, reply · **To what, where:** difference, Dog

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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 (difference), 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:pg19994:107:26
# text = But what's the difference?" replied the Dog.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	5	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	's	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	difference	difference	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
8	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	Dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present |  | the difference |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **reply** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past | the difference | the Dog |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent dog=Topic |

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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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