---
title: _The flatterer seeks some benefit at your expense. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: _The flatterer seeks some benefit at your expense. Who acts: flatterer, some. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Monkey and the Cat, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Monkey and the Cat, sentence 15

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\_The flatterer seeks some benefit at your expense.

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**Who acts:** flatterer, some · **What happens:** seek, benefit · **To what, where:** expense

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Monkey and the Cat. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (flatterer, some), 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:pg19994:63:15
# text = _The flatterer seeks some benefit at your expense.
1	_	_	PUNCT	NFP	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	flatterer	flatterer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	seeks	seek	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	6	nsubj	_	_
6	benefit	benefit	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	ccomp	_	_
7	at	at	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	expense	expense	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **seek** | present | the flatterer |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **benefit** | present | some |  |  | your expense |  |  | vn benefit-72.2 «NP V»: agent=Beneficiary |

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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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