---
title: "Follow me if you can," he said. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: "Follow me if you can," he said. Who acts: you, Peacock. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Peacock and the Crane, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Peacock and the Crane, sentence 6

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"Follow me if you can," he said.

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**Who acts:** you, Peacock · **What happens:** follow, say · **To what, where:** Peacock · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Peacock and the Crane. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, Peacock), 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:pg19994:78:6
# text = "Follow me if you can," he said.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Follow	follow	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **follow** *in a quote* | imperative | you *not said here* | Peacock |  |  |  |  | vn chase-51.6 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Peacock |  |  |  |  |  | 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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