---
title: _A small gain is worth more than a large promise. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: _A small gain is worth more than a large promise. Who acts: small gain. 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.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Fisherman and the Little Fish, sentence 9

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\_A small gain is worth more than a large promise.

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**Who acts:** small gain · **What happens:** be

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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 (small gain), 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:pg19994:148:9
# text = _A small gain is worth more than a large promise.
1	_	_	PUNCT	NFP	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	small	small	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	gain	gain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
5	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
6	worth	worth	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
7	more	more	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	6	obj	_	_
8	than	than	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	large	large	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	promise	promise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | a small gain |  |  |  |  | worth *property* | 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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