---
title: Running up, he caught the bird and clipped its wings. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: Running up, he caught the bird and clipped its wings. Who acts: Shepherd. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Eagle and the Jackdaw, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Eagle and the Jackdaw, sentence 7

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Running up, he caught the bird and clipped its wings.

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**Who acts:** Shepherd · **What happens:** run up, catch, clip · **To what, where:** bird, wings

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Eagle and the Jackdaw. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Shepherd), 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:pg19994:9:7
# text = Running up, he caught the bird and clipped its wings.
1	Running	run	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	advcl	_	_
2	up	up	ADP	RP	_	1	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
4	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	caught	catch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	clipped	clip	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
10	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	wings	wing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **run up** | gerund | Shepherd *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **catch** | past | Shepherd | the bird |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bird=Theme |
| 3 | **clip** | past | Shepherd *not said here* | bird's wings |  |  |  |  | vn cut-21.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent wing=Patient |

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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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