---
title: Then an idea came to him. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: Then an idea came to him. Who acts: idea. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Crow and the Pitcher, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Crow and the Pitcher, sentence 4

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Then an idea came to him.

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**Who acts:** idea · **What happens:** come · **To what, where:** matter

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Crow and the Pitcher. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (idea), 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:pg19994:33:4
# text = Then an idea came to him.
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	_
2	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	idea	idea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past | a idea |  | matter |  | then |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to he=Initial\_Location |

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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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