---
title: Whatever it is, it is wisest to keep at a safe distance." — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: Whatever it is, it is wisest to keep at a safe distance." Who acts: meal. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Cat and the Old Rat, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Cat and the Old Rat, sentence 16

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Whatever it is, it is wisest to keep at a safe distance."

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**Who acts:** meal · **What happens:** be, keep · **To what, where:** Whatever

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Cat and the Old Rat. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (meal), 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:pg19994:131:16
# text = Whatever it is, it is wisest to keep at a safe distance."
1	Whatever	whatever	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	advcl	_	_
2	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	1	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	1	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
5	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
7	wisest	wise	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	0	root	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	acl	_	_
10	at	at	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	safe	safe	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	distance	distance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | meal | Whatever |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | present | meal |  |  |  |  | wise *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **keep** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | at a safe distance | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent at distance=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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