---
title: Soon a swarm of blood-sucking flies settled on him; but he lay quiet… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: Soon a swarm of blood-sucking flies settled on him; but he lay quietly, still too weak to run away from them. Who acts: swarm. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Fox and the Hedgehog, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Fox and the Hedgehog, sentence 2

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Soon a swarm of blood-sucking flies settled on him; but he lay quietly, still too weak to run away from them.

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**Who acts:** swarm · **What happens:** suck, settle, lie, run away

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Fox and the Hedgehog. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (swarm), 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:pg19994:108:2
# text = Soon a swarm of blood-sucking flies settled on him; but he lay quietly, still too weak to run away from them.
1	Soon	soon	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	9	advmod	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	swarm	swarm	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
5	blood	blood	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	sucking	suck	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	amod	_	_
8	flies	fly	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nmod	_	_
9	settled	settle	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	on	on	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
13	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
14	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
15	lay	lie	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	parataxis	_	_
16	quietly	quietly	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
18	still	still	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
19	too	too	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
20	weak	weak	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	conj	_	_
21	to	to	PART	TO	_	22	mark	_	_
22	run	run	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	20	advcl	_	_
23	away	away	ADV	RB	_	22	advmod	_	_
24	from	from	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
25	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	22	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **suck** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn chew-39.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **settle** | past | a swarm of sucking flies |  |  |  |  | on Fox; soon *property* | vn correspond-36.1 «NP V PP.theme S»: agent=Agent on he=Topic |
| 3 | **lie** | past | swarm |  |  |  |  | quietly *property* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **run away** | to-infinitive | swarm *not said here* |  |  |  |  | from flies *= fly*; away *property* | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme from they=Trajectory |

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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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