---
title: "He could not have been bigger than this," she said. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: "He could not have been bigger than this," she said. Who acts: Frog, bigger. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Frogs and the Ox, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Frogs and the Ox, sentence 9

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"He could not have been bigger than this," she said.

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**Who acts:** Frog, bigger · **What happens:** not be, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Frogs and the Ox. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Frog, bigger), 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:pg19994:6:9
# text = "He could not have been bigger than this," she said.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
3	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	7	advmod	_	_
5	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	aux	_	_
6	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	7	cop	_	_
7	bigger	big	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	13	ccomp	_	_
8	than	than	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	_
12	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is** *in a quote* | could · perfect | Frog |  |  |  |  | than this; big *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | bigger *= big* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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