---
title: "Show me how to walk, mother dear," answered the little Crab obedien… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: "Show me how to walk, mother dear," answered the little Crab obediently, "I want to learn." Who acts: you, little Crab. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Young Crab and His Mother, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/5/3/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Aesop for Children](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/) / [The Young Crab and His Mother](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/5/) / 3

# The Aesop for Children, The Young Crab and His Mother, sentence 3

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Show me how to walk, mother dear," answered the little Crab obediently, "I want to learn."

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you, little Crab · **What happens:** show, walk, answer, want, learn · **To what, where:** little Crab · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Young Crab and His Mother. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, little Crab), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg19994:5:3
# text = "Show me how to walk, mother dear," answered the little Crab obediently, "I want to learn."
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Show	show	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	iobj	_	_
4	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	walk	walk	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	conj	_	_
9	dear	dear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
12	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	Crab	Crab	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	_
16	obediently	obediently	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
18	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	20	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
20	want	want	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	advcl	_	_
21	to	to	PART	TO	_	22	mark	_	_
22	learn	learn	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	20	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **show** *in a quote* | imperative | you *not said here* |  | the little Crab *= crab* |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent i=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **walk** *in a quote* | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | dear *property* | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | the little Crab |  |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **want** *in a quote* | present | the little Crab *= crab* |  |  |  |  | obediently *property* | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 5 | **learn** *not said to happen, in a quote* | to-infinitive | the little Crab *= crab* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn learn-14-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/5/2/)
- next →: [sentence 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/5/4/)
- ↑ back to [The Young Crab and His Mother](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/5/)