---
title: "Why is there always this hostility between us?" they said. " — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: "Why is there always this hostility between us?" they said. " Who acts: Wolves. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Wolves and the Sheep, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Wolves and the Sheep, sentence 4

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"Why is there always this hostility between us?" they said. "

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

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Wolves and the Sheep. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Wolves), 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:pg19994:145:4
# text = "Why is there always this hostility between us?" they said. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	7	advmod	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
4	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	3	expl	_	_
5	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	7	advmod	_	_
6	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	det	_	_
7	hostility	hostility	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	ccomp	_	_
8	between	between	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
12	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	13	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 |  | this hostility |  |  |  | between us; always *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | Wolves *= wolf* |  |  |  |  |  | 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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