---
title: "Why, that's a pebble!" — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: "Why, that's a pebble!" Who acts: that. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Mole and His Mother, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/142/7/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Aesop for Children](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/) / [The Mole and His Mother](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/142/) / 7

# The Aesop for Children, The Mole and His Mother, sentence 7

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Why, that's a pebble!"

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** that · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** pebble

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (that), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg19994:142:7
# text = "Why, that's a pebble!"
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
4	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	's	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	pebble	pebble	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | that | a pebble |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/142/6/)
- next →: [sentence 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/142/8/)
- ↑ back to [The Mole and His Mother](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/142/)