---
title: Once they decided to die rather than live in such misery. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: Once they decided to die rather than live in such misery. Who acts: Hares. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Hares and the Frogs, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Hares and the Frogs, sentence 3

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Once they decided to die rather than live in such misery.

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**Who acts:** Hares · **What happens:** decide, die

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Hares and the Frogs. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Hares), 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:pg19994:49:3
# text = Once they decided to die rather than live in such misery.
1	Once	once	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	decided	decide	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	die	die	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
6	rather	rather	ADV	RB	ExtPos=CCONJ	8	cc	_	_
7	than	than	ADP	IN	_	6	fixed	_	_
8	live	live	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	ccomp	_	_
9	in	in	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	such	such	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	misery	misery	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **decide** | past | Hares *= hare* |  |  |  |  |  | vn correspond-36.1-1 «NP V what S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **die** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | Hares *= hare* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |

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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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