---
title: One day he met a pair of Ducks and told them all his trouble. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: One day he met a pair of Ducks and told them all his trouble. 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.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Tortoise and the Ducks, sentence 7

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One day he met a pair of Ducks and told them all his trouble.

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**Who acts:** Tortoise · **What happens:** meet, tell, trouble · **To what, where:** pair, trouble, Ducks · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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: who acts (Tortoise), 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:pg19994:4:7
# text = One day he met a pair of Ducks and told them all his trouble.
1	One	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	2	nummod	_	_
2	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl:unmarked	_	_
3	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	met	meet	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	pair	pair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	Ducks	duck	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nmod	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
11	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	iobj	_	_
12	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	14	det:predet	_	_
13	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	trouble	trouble	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **meet** | past | Tortoise | a pair of Ducks |  |  | day |  | vn meet-36.3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent pair=Co-Agent |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | Tortoise *not said here* | Tortoise's trouble | Ducks *= duck* |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent they=Recipient trouble=Topic |
| 3 | **trouble** |  | Tortoise |  |  |  |  |  | nom trouble «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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