---
title: _Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: _Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves. Who acts: you, big things. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Astrologer, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Astrologer, sentence 12

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\_Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves.

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**Who acts:** you, big things · **What happens:** take · **To what, where:** care

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Astrologer. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, big things), 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:pg19994:91:12
# text = _Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves.
1	_	_	PUNCT	NFP	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Take	take	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	care	care	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nsubj	_	_
12	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	take	take	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
14	care	care	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	themselves	themselves	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | imperative | you *not said here* | care |  |  |  | of the little things | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP PP.initial\_location»: agent=Agent care=Theme of thing=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **take** | future | the big things | care |  |  |  | of things *= thing* | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP PP.initial\_location»: agent=Agent care=Theme of themselves=Initial\_Location |

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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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