---
title: "Then we must be off at once. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: "Then we must be off at once. Who acts: we. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Lark and Her Young Ones, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Lark and Her Young Ones, sentence 15

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"Then we must be off at once.

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**Who acts:** we · **What happens:** be off

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Lark and Her Young Ones. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (we), 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:pg19994:130:15
# text = "Then we must be off at once.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
3	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	be	be	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	off	off	ADP	RP	_	5	compound:prt	_	_
7	at	at	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be off** *in a quote* | must | we |  |  |  | then |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme at once=Location |

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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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