---
title: But let me ask one question: Who will bell the Cat?" — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: But let me ask one question: Who will bell the Cat?" Who acts: you, me. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, Belling the Cat, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, Belling the Cat, sentence 12

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But let me ask one question: Who will bell the Cat?"

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**Who acts:** you, me · **What happens:** let, ask, bell · **To what, where:** me, one question

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, Belling 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 (you, me), 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:pg19994:8:12
# text = But let me ask one question: Who will bell the Cat?"
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	2	cc	_	_
2	let	let	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	ask	ask	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	6	nummod	_	_
6	question	question	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	10	punct	_	_
8	Who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj	_	_
9	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	bell	bell	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	Cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **let** | imperative | you *not said here* | me |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | infinitive | me *not said here* | one question |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent question=Recipient |
| 3 | **bell** | future |  |  |  |  |  |  | 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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