---
title: A Merchant, driving his Ass homeward from the seashore with a heavy… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: A Merchant, driving his Ass homeward from the seashore with a heavy load of salt, came to a river crossed by a shallow ford. Who acts: Merchant. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Ass and the Load of Salt, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Ass and the Load of Salt, sentence 1

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A Merchant, driving his Ass homeward from the seashore with a heavy load of salt, came to a river crossed by a shallow ford.

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**Who acts:** Merchant · **What happens:** drive, come, cross · **To what, where:** Ass homeward, seashore, river

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Ass and the Load of Salt. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Merchant), 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:pg19994:38:1
# text = A Merchant, driving his Ass homeward from the seashore with a heavy load of salt, came to a river crossed by a shallow ford.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Merchant	merchant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
4	driving	drive	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	2	acl	_	_
5	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
6	Ass	ass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	_
7	homeward	homeward	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
8	from	from	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	seashore	seashore	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
11	with	with	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	heavy	heavy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	load	load	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	salt	salt	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
18	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
19	to	to	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	river	river	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	_
22	crossed	cross	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	21	acl	_	_
23	by	by	ADP	IN	_	26	case	_	_
24	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	26	det	_	_
25	shallow	shallow	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	26	amod	_	_
26	ford	ford	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	18	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **drive** | gerund | a Merchant *not said here* | Merchant's Ass homeward |  | the seashore |  | with a heavy load of salt | vn nonvehicle-51.4.2-1 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent homeward=Theme from seashore=Trajectory |
| 2 | **come** | past | a Merchant |  |  | a river |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to river=Initial\_Location |
| 3 | **cross** | participle |  | a river *not said here* |  |  |  | by a shallow ford | vn contiguous\_location-47.8-1 «NP V»: agent=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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