---
title: _The tyrant can always find an excuse for his tyranny. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: _The tyrant can always find an excuse for his tyranny. Who acts: tyrant. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Wolf and the Lamb, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Wolf and the Lamb, sentence 19

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\_The tyrant can always find an excuse for his tyranny.

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**Who acts:** tyrant · **What happens:** find · **To what, where:** excuse

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Wolf and the Lamb. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (tyrant), 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:pg19994:47:19
# text = _The tyrant can always find an excuse for his tyranny.
1	_	_	PUNCT	NFP	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	tyrant	tyrant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
4	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
5	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	6	advmod	_	_
6	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	excuse	excuse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	for	for	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	tyranny	tyranny	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **find** | can | the tyrant | a excuse |  |  |  | for tyrant's tyranny; always *property* | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP PP.beneficiary»: agent=Agent excuse=Theme for tyranny=Beneficiary |

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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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