---
title: The Flies were quickly smeared from head to foot with honey. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: The Flies were quickly smeared from head to foot with honey. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Flies and the Honey, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Flies and the Honey, sentence 5

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The Flies were quickly smeared from head to foot with honey.

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**What happens:** smear · **To what, where:** Flies, head

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Flies and the Honey. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg19994:122:5
# text = The Flies were quickly smeared from head to foot with honey.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Flies	Fly	PROPN	NNPS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux:pass	_	_
4	quickly	quickly	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	smeared	smear	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
6	from	from	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
8	to	to	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	foot	foot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
10	with	with	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	honey	honey	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **smear** | past · passive |  | the Flies |  | head |  | to foot with honey; quickly *property* | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V NP.destination»: subject=Destination |

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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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