---
title: No doubt he was hungry, but that was not an excuse for stealing. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: No doubt he was hungry, but that was not an excuse for stealing. Who acts: doubt, that. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Cock and the Fox, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Cock and the Fox, sentence 2

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No doubt he was hungry, but that was not an excuse for stealing.

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**Who acts:** doubt, that · **What happens:** be, not be · **To what, where:** excuse

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Cock 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 (doubt, that), 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:pg19994:146:2
# text = No doubt he was hungry, but that was not an excuse for stealing.
1	No	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	2	det	_	_
2	doubt	doubt	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
5	hungry	hungry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
8	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	12	nsubj	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
10	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	12	advmod	_	_
11	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	excuse	excuse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
13	for	for	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	stealing	stealing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | no doubt |  |  |  |  | hungry *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **is a** | past | that | a excuse |  |  |  | for stealing | tree rules |

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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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