---
title: Delighted to find how much lighter his burden had become, the Ass fi… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: Delighted to find how much lighter his burden had become, the Ass finished the journey very gayly. Who acts: burden, Ass, 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 4

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Delighted to find how much lighter his burden had become, the Ass finished the journey very gayly.

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**Who acts:** burden, Ass, Merchant · **What happens:** find, become, finish, burden · **To what, where:** journey

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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 (burden, Ass, 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:pg19994:38:4
# text = Delighted to find how much lighter his burden had become, the Ass finished the journey very gayly.
1	Delighted	delighted	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
2	to	to	PART	TO	_	3	mark	_	_
3	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	1	advcl	_	_
4	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	_
5	much	much	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	advmod	_	_
6	lighter	light	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	3	xcomp	_	_
7	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	burden	burden	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
9	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	become	become	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	6	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	Ass	Ass	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
14	finished	finish	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	journey	journey	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	_
17	very	very	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	gayly	gayly	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **find** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | light *property* | vn declare-29.4-1-1 «NP V what S\_INF»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **become** | past · perfect | Merchant's burden |  |  |  |  |  | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **finish** | past | the Ass | the journey |  |  |  | gayly *property* | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP V NP.eventuality»: agent=Affector journey=Eventuality |
| 4 | **burden** |  | Merchant |  |  |  |  |  | nom burden «cognition transitive»: 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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