---
title: But they soon saw who he was. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: But they soon saw who he was. Who acts: Peacocks, Jackdaw. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Vain Jackdaw and His Borrowed Feathers, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Vain Jackdaw and His Borrowed Feathers, sentence 8

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But they soon saw who he was.

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**Who acts:** Peacocks, Jackdaw · **What happens:** see, be · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Vain Jackdaw and His Borrowed Feathers. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Peacocks, Jackdaw), 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:pg19994:60:8
# text = But they soon saw who he was.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	soon	soon	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	4	advmod	_	_
4	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	4	ccomp	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
7	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **see** | past | Peacocks *= peacock* |  |  |  |  | soon *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **is a** | past | Jackdaw |  |  |  |  |  | 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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