---
title: A little Mole once said to his Mother: — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: A little Mole once said to his Mother: Who acts: little Mole. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Mole and His Mother, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Mole and His Mother, sentence 1

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A little Mole once said to his Mother:

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**Who acts:** little Mole · **What happens:** say · **To what, where:** Mother · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Mole and His Mother. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (little Mole), 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:pg19994:142:1
# text = A little Mole once said to his Mother:
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	Mole	mole	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	5	advmod	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	Mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | a little Mole |  | Mole's Mother |  |  | once *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to mother=Recipient |

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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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