---
title: Can it be a crime to eat sheep, such stupid mutton heads? — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: Can it be a crime to eat sheep, such stupid mutton heads? Who acts: Fox. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Animals and the Plague, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Animals and the Plague, sentence 18

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Can it be a crime to eat sheep, such stupid mutton heads?

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**Who acts:** Fox · **What happens:** be, eat · **To what, where:** crime, sheep

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Animals and the Plague. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Fox), 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:pg19994:125:18
# text = Can it be a crime to eat sheep, such stupid mutton heads?
1	Can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
2	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	crime	crime	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	acl	_	_
8	sheep	sheep	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	such	such	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
11	stupid	stupid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
12	mutton	mutton	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	_
13	heads	head	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | can | Fox | a crime |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **eat** | to-infinitive |  | sheep and such stupid mutton heads |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent sheep=Patient |

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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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