---
title: And they turned their backs on the Grasshopper and went on with thei… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: And they turned their backs on the Grasshopper and went on with their work. Who acts: Ants. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Ants and the Grasshopper, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Ants and the Grasshopper, sentence 8

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And they turned their backs on the Grasshopper and went on with their work.

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**Who acts:** Ants · **What happens:** turn, go on, work · **To what, where:** backs

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Ants and the Grasshopper. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Ants), 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:pg19994:34:8
# text = And they turned their backs on the Grasshopper and went on with their work.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	turned	turn	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	backs	back	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	_
6	on	on	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	Grasshopper	Grasshopper	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
11	on	on	ADP	RP	_	10	compound:prt	_	_
12	with	with	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	work	work	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **turn** | past | Ants *= ant* | Ants's backs |  |  |  | on the Grasshopper | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent back=Theme |
| 2 | **go on** | past | Ants *= ant* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | with Ants's work | vn function-105.2.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **work** |  | Ants *= ant* |  |  |  |  |  | nom work «act intransitive»: poss=agent |

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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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