---
title: But the best he could do was to get his head out. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: But the best he could do was to get his head out. Who acts: Mouse. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Mouse and the Weasel, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Mouse and the Weasel, sentence 7

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But the best he could do was to get his head out.

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**Who acts:** Mouse · **What happens:** do, be

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Mouse and the Weasel. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Mouse), 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:pg19994:84:7
# text = But the best he could do was to get his head out.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	best	good	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	0	root	_	_
4	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	acl:relcl	_	_
7	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	get	get	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
10	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	out	out	ADP	RP	_	9	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | could | Mouse |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  |  | get *property* | 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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