---
title: How to get them was the question. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: How to get them was the question. Who acts: Cat. 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 5

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How to get them was the question.

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**Who acts:** Cat · **What happens:** get, be · **To what, where:** question

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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 (Cat), 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:pg19994:63:5
# text = How to get them was the question.
1	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
2	to	to	PART	TO	_	3	mark	_	_
3	get	get	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
5	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	question	question	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **get** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **is a** | past | Cat | the question |  |  |  |  | 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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