---
title: An Ass and a Fox had become close comrades, and were constantly in e… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: An Ass and a Fox had become close comrades, and were constantly in each other's company. Who acts: Ass. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Ass, the Fox, and the Lion, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Ass, the Fox, and the Lion, sentence 1

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An Ass and a Fox had become close comrades, and were constantly in each other's company.

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**Who acts:** Ass · **What happens:** become, be · **To what, where:** close comrades, other company

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Ass, the Fox, and the Lion. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Ass), 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:pg19994:44:1
# text = An Ass and a Fox had become close comrades, and were constantly in each other's company.
1	An	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Ass	ass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
3	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	Fox	fox	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	conj	_	_
6	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	become	become	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
8	close	close	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	comrades	comrade	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
12	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
13	constantly	constantly	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
14	in	in	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
15	each	each	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	18	det	_	_
16	other	other	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	's	's	PART	POS	_	16	case	_	_
18	company	company	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **become** | past · perfect | a Ass and a Fox | close comrades |  |  |  |  | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient |
| 2 | **is** | past |  |  |  | each other company |  | constantly *property* | tree rules |

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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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