---
title: He was very much astonished at the strange sight and cried: — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: He was very much astonished at the strange sight and cried: A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Tortoise and the Ducks, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/4/14/)

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# The Aesop for Children, The Tortoise and the Ducks, sentence 14

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He was very much astonished at the strange sight and cried:

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**What happens:** astonish, cry · **To what, where:** Crow, strange sight

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Tortoise and the Ducks. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg19994:4:14
# text = He was very much astonished at the strange sight and cried:
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux:pass	_	_
3	very	very	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	much	much	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	astonished	astonish	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
6	at	at	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	strange	strange	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	sight	sight	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **astonish** | past · passive |  | Crow |  | the strange sight |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: subject=Experiencer |
| 2 | **cry** *speech: express* | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=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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