---
title: So the Fox, who had consented to act as judge, marked the distance a… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: So the Fox, who had consented to act as judge, marked the distance and started the runners off. Who acts: Fox. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Hare and the Tortoise, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Hare and the Tortoise, sentence 6

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So the Fox, who had consented to act as judge, marked the distance and started the runners off.

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**Who acts:** Fox · **What happens:** consent, act, mark, start off · **To what, where:** distance, runners

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Hare and the Tortoise. 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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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg19994:1021`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg19994:128:6
# text = So the Fox, who had consented to act as judge, marked the distance and started the runners off.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	Fox	fox	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
5	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	7	nsubj	_	_
6	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	consented	consent	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	3	acl:relcl	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	act	act	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	xcomp	_	_
10	as	as	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	judge	judge	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
13	marked	mark	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	distance	distance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	started	start	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	conj	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	runners	runner	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	obj	_	_
20	off	off	ADP	RP	_	17	compound:prt	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **consent** | past · perfect | the Fox |  |  |  |  |  | vn acquiesce-95.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 2 | **act** | to-infinitive | the Fox *not said here* |  |  |  |  | as judge | vn masquerade-29.6-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Agent as judge=Attribute |
| 3 | **mark** | past | the Fox | the distance |  |  |  |  | vn image\_impression-25.1 «NP V NP.destination»: agent=Agent distance=Destination |
| 4 | **start off** | past | the Fox *not said here* | the runners |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent runner=Eventuality |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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