---
title: _Liars are not believed even when they speak the truth. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: _Liars are not believed even when they speak the truth. Who acts: Liars. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf, sentence 19

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\_Liars are not believed even when they speak the truth.

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**Who acts:** Liars · **What happens:** not believe, speak · **To what, where:** Liars, truth · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Liars), 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:pg19994:20:19
# text = _Liars are not believed even when they speak the truth.
1	_	_	PUNCT	NFP	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Liars	liar	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj:pass	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux:pass	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	believed	believe	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
6	even	even	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
7	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	9	mark	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	speak	speak	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	truth	truth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **believe** | present · passive |  | Liars |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: subject=Stimulus |
| 2 | **speak** *speech: other* | present | Liars *= liar* | the truth |  |  |  |  | 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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