---
title: No compromise was possible, and so they went at it tooth and claw. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: No compromise was possible, and so they went at it tooth and claw. Who acts: compromise, Birds. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Birds, the Beasts, and the Bat, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Birds, the Beasts, and the Bat, sentence 2

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No compromise was possible, and so they went at it tooth and claw.

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**Who acts:** compromise, Birds · **What happens:** be, go · **To what, where:** tooth, compromise

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Birds, the Beasts, and the Bat. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (compromise, Birds), 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:pg19994:45:2
# text = No compromise was possible, and so they went at it tooth and claw.
1	No	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	2	det	_	_
2	compromise	compromise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	possible	possible	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
7	so	so	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
10	at	at	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	obl	_	_
12	tooth	tooth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	claw	claw	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	conj	_	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 | **is** | past | no compromise |  |  |  |  | possible *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **go** | past | Birds *= bird* | tooth and claw |  | compromise |  |  | vn occur-48.3-2 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme at it=Location |

<!-- .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.

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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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