---
title: All he could do to amuse himself was to talk to his dog or play on h… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: All he could do to amuse himself was to talk to his dog or play on his shepherd's pipe. Who acts: All, Shepherd. 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/20/3/)

<!-- 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 Shepherd Boy and the Wolf](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/20/) / 3

# The Aesop for Children, The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf, sentence 3

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
All he could do to amuse himself was to talk to his dog or play on his shepherd's pipe.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** All, Shepherd · **What happens:** do, amuse, be · **To what, where:** pipe

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (All, Shepherd), 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:pg19994:20:3
# text = All he could do to amuse himself was to talk to his dog or play on his shepherd's pipe.
1	All	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	4	nsubj	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	amuse	amuse	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	csubj	_	_
7	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	10	nsubj	_	_
8	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	talk	talk	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	ccomp	_	_
11	to	to	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
14	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	play	play	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	conj	_	_
16	on	on	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
17	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	18	nmod:poss	_	_
18	shepherd	shepherd	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	's	's	PART	POS	_	18	case	_	_
20	pipe	pipe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | could | All |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **amuse** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **is** | past | Shepherd |  |  | Shepherd's shepherd's pipe |  | to Shepherd's dog or play; talk *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.

<!-- 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: [sentence 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/20/2/)
- next →: [sentence 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/20/4/)
- ↑ back to [The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/20/)