---
title: "They must be on their way to sell the poor thing's hide," said anot… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: "They must be on their way to sell the poor thing's hide," said another. Who acts: Miller. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Miller, His Son, and the Ass, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Miller, His Son, and the Ass, sentence 19

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"They must be on their way to sell the poor thing's hide," said another.

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**Who acts:** Miller · **What happens:** be, sell, say · **To what, where:** way, hide, another · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Miller, His Son, and the Ass. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Miller), 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:pg19994:134:19
# text = "They must be on their way to sell the poor thing's hide," said another.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
3	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
4	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	cop	_	_
5	on	on	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	ccomp	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	sell	sell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	acl	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	's	's	PART	POS	_	12	case	_	_
14	hide	hide	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
17	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
18	another	another	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	17	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	17	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** *in a quote* | must | Miller |  |  | Miller's way |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **sell** *in a quote* | to-infinitive |  | the poor thing's hide |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent hide=Theme |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | another |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent another=Topic |

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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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