---
title: "No need of witnesses," said one of the hearers. " — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: "No need of witnesses," said one of the hearers. " Who acts: need. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Leap At Rhodes, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Leap At Rhodes, sentence 5

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"No need of witnesses," said one of the hearers. "

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**Who acts:** need · **What happens:** say, need · **To what, where:** one, witnesses · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Leap At Rhodes. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (need), 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:pg19994:40:5
# text = "No need of witnesses," said one of the hearers. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	No	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	3	det	_	_
3	need	need	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	witnesses	witness	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	8	obj	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	hearers	hearer	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
14	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | no need of witnesses | one of the hearers |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent one=Topic |
| 2 | **need** *in a quote* |  |  | witnesses |  |  |  |  | nom need «state transitive»: of=patient |

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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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