---
title: A poor Woodman was cutting down a tree near the edge of a deep pool… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: A poor Woodman was cutting down a tree near the edge of a deep pool in the forest. Who acts: poor Woodman. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, Mercury and the Woodman, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, Mercury and the Woodman, sentence 1

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A poor Woodman was cutting down a tree near the edge of a deep pool in the forest.

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**Who acts:** poor Woodman · **What happens:** cut down · **To what, where:** tree, edge

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, Mercury and the Woodman. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor Woodman), 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:pg19994:93:1
# text = A poor Woodman was cutting down a tree near the edge of a deep pool in the forest.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	Woodman	Woodman	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	cutting	cut	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
6	down	down	ADP	RP	_	5	compound:prt	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
9	near	near	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	edge	edge	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	deep	deep	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	pool	pool	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	_
16	in	in	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	forest	forest	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cut down** | past · progressive | a poor Woodman | a tree |  | the edge of a deep pool in the forest |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tree=Product |

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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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