---
title: They hardly dared blink for fear of losing him out of their sight a… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: They hardly dared blink for fear of losing him out of their sight a single instant. Who acts: Pheasants, fear. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Fox and the Pheasants, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Fox and the Pheasants, sentence 5

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They hardly dared blink for fear of losing him out of their sight a single instant.

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**Who acts:** Pheasants, fear · **What happens:** dare, lose, sight · **To what, where:** blink, Fox, sight

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Fox and the Pheasants. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Pheasants, fear), 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:pg19994:117:5
# text = They hardly dared blink for fear of losing him out of their sight a single instant.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	hardly	hardly	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
3	dared	dare	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	blink	blink	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
5	for	for	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	fear	fear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
7	of	of	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
8	losing	lose	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	6	acl	_	_
9	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	_
10	out	out	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	sight	sight	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	single	single	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	instant	instant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **dare** | past | Pheasants *= pheasant* | blink |  |  |  | for fear; hardly *property* | vn urge-58.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent blink=Recipient |
| 2 | **lose** | gerund | fear *not said here* | Fox |  | Pheasants's sight |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **sight** |  | Pheasants *= pheasant* |  |  |  |  |  | nom sight «cognition transitive»: poss=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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