---
title: "What a fool I am," he said. " — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: "What a fool I am," he said. " Who acts: bunch. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Fox and the Grapes, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Fox and the Grapes, sentence 8

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"What a fool I am," he said. "

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**Who acts:** bunch · **What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** fool · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Fox and the Grapes. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (bunch), 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:pg19994:14:8
# text = "What a fool I am," he said. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	4	nsubj	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	fool	fool	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	ccomp	_	_
5	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	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
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | present |  | a fool |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | bunch |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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