---
title: On the ground lay a Snake, stiff and frozen with the cold. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: On the ground lay a Snake, stiff and frozen with the cold. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Farmer and the Snake, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Farmer and the Snake, sentence 2

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On the ground lay a Snake, stiff and frozen with the cold.

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**What happens:** lie, freeze · **To what, where:** Snake, ground

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Farmer and the Snake. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg19994:85:2
# text = On the ground lay a Snake, stiff and frozen with the cold.
1	On	on	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
4	lay	lie	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	Snake	snake	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	stiff	stiff	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	parataxis	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	frozen	freeze	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	8	conj	_	_
11	with	with	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	cold	cold	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lie** | past |  | a Snake |  | the ground |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **freeze** | participle |  |  |  |  |  | with the cold | vn weather-57 «It V PP.theme»: with cold=Theme |

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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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