---
title: "Dear friend," he said, "I was just on my way to visit a sick relati… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: "Dear friend," he said, "I was just on my way to visit a sick relative, when I stumbled into this string and got all tangled up. Who acts: Fox. 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 6

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"Dear friend," he said, "I was just on my way to visit a sick relative, when I stumbled into this string and got all tangled up.

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**Who acts:** Fox · **What happens:** say, be, visit, stumble, tangle up · **To what, where:** way, sick relative, string · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Fox), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg19994:1191`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg19994:146:6
# text = "Dear friend," he said, "I was just on my way to visit a sick relative, when I stumbled into this string and got all tangled up.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	_
2	Dear	dear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	friend	friend	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	vocative	_	_
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
9	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	_
10	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
11	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
12	just	just	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
13	on	on	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	ccomp	_	_
16	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
17	visit	visit	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	acl	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	sick	sick	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	relative	relative	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	_
21	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	_
22	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	24	advmod	_	_
23	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	24	nsubj	_	_
24	stumbled	stumble	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	advcl	_	_
25	into	into	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
26	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	27	det	_	_
27	string	string	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	24	obl	_	_
28	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	31	cc	_	_
29	got	get	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	31	aux:pass	_	_
30	all	all	ADV	RB	_	31	advmod	_	_
31	tangled	tangle	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	24	conj	_	_
32	up	up	ADP	RP	_	31	compound:prt	_	_
33	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	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 | Fox |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** *in a quote* | past | Fox |  |  | my way |  | Dear friend *vocative* | tree rules |
| 3 | **visit** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | Fox *not said here* | sick relative |  |  |  |  | vn meet-36.3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent relative=Co-Agent |
| 4 | **stumble** *in a quote* | past | Fox |  |  | this string |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme into string=Destination |
| 5 | **tangle up** *in a quote* | past · passive | Fox *not said here* |  |  |  |  | all *property* | 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.

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**Text:** «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, Project Gutenberg book 19994 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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