---
title: "Why certainly----" began the Tortoise. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: "Why certainly----" began the Tortoise. 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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# The Aesop for Children, The Tortoise and the Ducks, sentence 16

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"Why certainly----" began the Tortoise.

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**What happens:** begin · **To what, where:** Tortoise

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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:pg19994:4:16
# text = "Why certainly----" began the Tortoise.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
3	certainly	certainly	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	----	----	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	_
6	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	Tortoise	Tortoise	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **begin** | past |  | the Tortoise |  |  |  | certainly *property* | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tortoise=Eventuality |

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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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