---
title: The Ass was asked to divide the spoil. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: The Ass was asked to divide the spoil. Who acts: Ass. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Lion, the Ass, and the Fox, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Lion, the Ass, and the Fox, sentence 2

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The Ass was asked to divide the spoil.

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**Who acts:** Ass · **What happens:** ask, divide · **To what, where:** Ass, spoil

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Lion, the Ass, and the Fox. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Ass), 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:pg19994:140:2
# text = The Ass was asked to divide the spoil.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Ass	Ass	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux:pass	_	_
4	asked	ask	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	divide	divide	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	spoil	spoil	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past · passive |  | the Ass |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S\_INF»: subject=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **divide** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | the Ass *not said here* | the spoil |  |  |  |  | vn multiply-108-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent spoil=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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