---
title: But the Dolphins took the shipwrecked people on their backs and swam… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: But the Dolphins took the shipwrecked people on their backs and swam with them to shore. Who acts: Dolphins. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Monkey and the Dolphin, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Monkey and the Dolphin, sentence 3

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But the Dolphins took the shipwrecked people on their backs and swam with them to shore.

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**Who acts:** Dolphins · **What happens:** take, shipwreck, swim · **To what, where:** shipwrecked people, backs, shore

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Monkey and the Dolphin. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Dolphins), 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:pg19994:61:3
# text = But the Dolphins took the shipwrecked people on their backs and swam with them to shore.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	Dolphins	Dolphin	PROPN	NNPS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
4	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	shipwrecked	shipwreck	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	7	amod	_	_
7	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
8	on	on	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	backs	back	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	swam	swim	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
13	with	with	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	obl	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	shore	shore	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past | the Dolphins | the shipwrecked people |  | Dolphins's backs |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent people=Theme on back=Destination |
| 2 | **shipwreck** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn destroy-44 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **swim** | past | the Dolphins *not said here* | shore |  |  |  | with Dolphins *= dolphin* | vn swarm-47.5.1-1 «PP.location V PP.theme»: agent=Location with they=Theme |

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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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