---
title: He could get it neither up nor down, and of course he could not eat… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: He could get it neither up nor down, and of course he could not eat a thing. Who acts: Wolf. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Wolf and the Crane, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Wolf and the Crane, sentence 2

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He could get it neither up nor down, and of course he could not eat a thing.

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**Who acts:** Wolf · **What happens:** get, not eat · **To what, where:** throat, thing

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Wolf and the Crane. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Wolf), 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:pg19994:16:2
# text = He could get it neither up nor down, and of course he could not eat a thing.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	get	get	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	neither	neither	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	up	up	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
7	nor	nor	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	8	cc	_	_
8	down	down	ADV	RB	_	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	ExtPos=ADV	16	advmod	_	_
12	course	course	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	fixed	_	_
13	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
14	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
15	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	16	advmod	_	_
16	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **get** | could | Wolf | throat |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer it=Stimulus |
| 2 | **not** **eat** | could | Wolf | a thing |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent thing=Patient |

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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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