---
title: No matter how hard he tries, he cannot leave home. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: No matter how hard he tries, he cannot leave home. Who acts: 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/4/2/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Aesop for Children](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/) / [The Tortoise and the Ducks](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/4/) / 2

# The Aesop for Children, The Tortoise and the Ducks, sentence 2

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
No matter how hard he tries, he cannot leave home.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Tortoise · **What happens:** try, not leave · **To what, where:** matter

<!-- .vabout -->
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: who acts (Tortoise), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg19994:4:2
# text = No matter how hard he tries, he cannot leave home.
1	No	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	2	det	_	_
2	matter	matter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl:unmarked	_	_
3	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	4	advmod	_	_
4	hard	hard	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	6	advmod	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	tries	try	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
9	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
11	leave	leave	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	ccomp	_	_
12	home	home	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **try** | present | Tortoise | no matter |  |  |  | hard *property* | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **not** **leave** | can | Tortoise |  |  |  |  | home *property* | vn escape-51.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/4/1/)
- next →: [sentence 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/4/3/)
- ↑ back to [The Tortoise and the Ducks](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/4/)