---
title: "Show me a white paw," he said, "or I won't let you in." — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: "Show me a white paw," he said, "or I won't let you in." Who acts: Wolf. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Wolf, the Kid, and the Goat, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Wolf, the Kid, and the Goat, sentence 8

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"Show me a white paw," he said, "or I won't let you in."

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**Who acts:** Wolf · **What happens:** show, say, not let in · **To what, where:** white paw, Wolf, you · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Wolf, the Kid, and the Goat. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Wolf), 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:pg19994:137:8
# text = "Show me a white paw," he said, "or I won't let you in."
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Show	show	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
3	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	iobj	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	paw	paw	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
12	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
14	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
15	wo	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	17	advmod	_	_
17	let	let	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	conj	_	_
18	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	17	obj	_	_
19	in	in	ADP	RP	_	17	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	17	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	17	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **show** *in a quote* | infinitive |  | a white paw | Wolf |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent i=Recipient paw=Topic |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Wolf |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **not** **let in** *in a quote* | future | Wolf | you |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent you=Theme |

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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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