---
title: A Wild Boar was sharpening his tusks busily against the stump of a t… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: A Wild Boar was sharpening his tusks busily against the stump of a tree, when a Fox happened by. Who acts: Wild Boar, Fox. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Wild Boar and the Fox, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Wild Boar and the Fox, sentence 1

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A Wild Boar was sharpening his tusks busily against the stump of a tree, when a Fox happened by.

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**Who acts:** Wild Boar, Fox · **What happens:** sharpen, happen by · **To what, where:** tusks

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Wild Boar and the Fox. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Wild Boar, Fox), 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:pg19994:43:1
# text = A Wild Boar was sharpening his tusks busily against the stump of a tree, when a Fox happened by.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	Wild	wild	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	Boar	Boar	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	sharpening	sharpen	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
6	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	tusks	tusk	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	_
8	busily	busily	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
9	against	against	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	stump	stump	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
16	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	19	advmod	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	Fox	fox	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nsubj	_	_
19	happened	happen	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
20	by	by	ADP	IN	_	19	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sharpen** | past · progressive | a Wild Boar | Boar's tusks |  |  |  | against the stump of a tree; busily *property* | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent tusk=Patient |
| 2 | **happen by** | past | a Fox |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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