---
title: "How much better it would have been," they said, "to have shared in… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: "How much better it would have been," they said, "to have shared in a friendly spirit." Who acts: Lion, wounds. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Lion, the Bear, and the Fox, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Lion, the Bear, and the Fox, sentence 4

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"How much better it would have been," they said, "to have shared in a friendly spirit."

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**Who acts:** Lion, wounds · **What happens:** be, say, share · **To what, where:** friendly spirit · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Lion, the Bear, 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 (Lion, wounds), 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:pg19994:46:4
# text = "How much better it would have been," they said, "to have shared in a friendly spirit."
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
3	much	much	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	0	root	_	_
5	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
6	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
7	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	aux	_	_
8	been	be	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
14	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	17	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
16	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	17	aux	_	_
17	shared	share	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	12	ccomp	_	_
18	in	in	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
20	friendly	friendly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	spirit	spirit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** *in a quote* | would · perfect | Lion |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | wounds *= wound* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **share** *in a quote* | to-infinitive · perfect |  |  |  | a friendly spirit |  |  | 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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