---
title: But the Reeds bowed low in the wind and sang a sad and mournful song. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: But the Reeds bowed low in the wind and sang a sad and mournful song. Who acts: Reeds. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Oak and the Reeds, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Oak and the Reeds, sentence 3

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But the Reeds bowed low in the wind and sang a sad and mournful song.

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**Who acts:** Reeds · **What happens:** bow, sing · **To what, where:** wind, sad song

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Oak and the Reeds. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Reeds), 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:pg19994:30:3
# text = But the Reeds bowed low in the wind and sang a sad and mournful song.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	Reeds	reed	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
4	bowed	bow	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	low	low	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	xcomp	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	wind	wind	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	sang	sing	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
12	sad	sad	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	mournful	mournful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	conj	_	_
15	song	song	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **bow** | past | the Reeds |  |  | the wind |  | low *property* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent in wind=Location |
| 2 | **sing** *speech: express* | past | the Reeds *not said here* | a sad song |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location song=Theme |

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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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