---
title: A poor Fisherman, who lived on the fish he caught, had bad luck one… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: A poor Fisherman, who lived on the fish he caught, had bad luck one day and caught nothing but a very small fry. Who acts: poor Fisherman, Fisherman. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Fisherman and the Little Fish, 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/pg19994/148/1/)

<!-- 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 Fisherman and the Little Fish](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/148/) / 1

# The Aesop for Children, The Fisherman and the Little Fish, sentence 1

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A poor Fisherman, who lived on the fish he caught, had bad luck one day and caught nothing but a very small fry.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** poor Fisherman, Fisherman · **What happens:** live, catch, have · **To what, where:** fish, bad luck, nothing

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Fisherman and the Little Fish. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor Fisherman, Fisherman), 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:pg19994:148:1
# text = A poor Fisherman, who lived on the fish he caught, had bad luck one day and caught nothing but a very small fry.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	Fisherman	Fisherman	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
5	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	6	nsubj	_	_
6	lived	live	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	on	on	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	fish	fish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	caught	catch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
13	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
14	bad	bad	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	luck	luck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
16	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	17	nummod	_	_
17	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl:unmarked	_	_
18	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
19	caught	catch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	conj	_	_
20	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	19	obj	_	_
21	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	25	cc	_	_
22	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	25	det	_	_
23	very	very	ADV	RB	_	24	advmod	_	_
24	small	small	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	25	amod	_	_
25	fry	fry	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **live** | past | a poor Fisherman |  |  |  |  | on the fish | vn exist-47.1-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme on fish=Location |
| 2 | **catch** | past | Fisherman | the fish *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent fish=Theme |
| 3 | **have** | past | a poor Fisherman *not said here* | bad luck |  |  | day |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent luck=Patient |
| 4 | **catch** | past | a poor Fisherman *not said here* | nothing |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nothing=Theme |

<!-- .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: [The Ass in the Lion's Skin, 10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/147/10/)
- next →: [sentence 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/148/2/)
- ↑ back to [The Fisherman and the Little Fish](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/148/)