---
title: _In a pinch a good use of our wits may help us out. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: _In a pinch a good use of our wits may help us out. Who acts: good use. 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 7

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\_In a pinch a good use of our wits may help us out.

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**Who acts:** good use · **What happens:** help out, use · **To what, where:** pinch, us, wits

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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 (good use), 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:pg19994:33:7
# text = _In a pinch a good use of our wits may help us out.
1	_	_	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	In	in	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	pinch	pinch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	use	use	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	wits	wit	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nmod	_	_
11	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
12	help	help	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	acl:relcl	_	_
13	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	12	obj	_	_
14	out	out	ADP	RP	_	12	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **help out** | may | a good use of our wits | a pinch *not said here* | us |  |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent we=Beneficiary |
| 2 | **use** |  |  | our wits |  |  |  |  | nom use «act transitive»: of=patient |

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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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