---
title: The Stork begged the Farmer to spare him. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: The Stork begged the Farmer to spare him. Who acts: Stork. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Farmer and the Stork, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Farmer and the Stork, sentence 3

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The Stork begged the Farmer to spare him.

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**Who acts:** Stork · **What happens:** beg, spare · **To what, where:** Farmer

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Farmer and the Stork. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Stork), 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:pg19994:23:3
# text = The Stork begged the Farmer to spare him.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Stork	Stork	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	begged	beg	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	Farmer	Farmer	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	spare	spare	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	advcl	_	_
8	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **beg** *speech: request* | past | the Stork |  | the Farmer |  |  |  | vn beg-58.2-1-1 «NP V NP PP.Topic»: agent=Agent farmer=Recipient |
| 2 | **spare** | to-infinitive | the Stork *not said here* | Farmer |  |  |  |  | vn bill-54.5 «NP V NP NP.asset»: agent=Agent he=Asset |

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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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