---
title: Mercury laid the golden axe on the bank and sprang back into the pool. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: Mercury laid the golden axe on the bank and sprang back into the pool. Who acts: Mercury. 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 13

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Mercury laid the golden axe on the bank and sprang back into the pool.

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**Who acts:** Mercury · **What happens:** lay, spring back · **To what, where:** golden axe, bank, pool

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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 (Mercury), 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:pg19994:93:13
# text = Mercury laid the golden axe on the bank and sprang back into the pool.
1	Mercury	Mercury	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	laid	lay	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	golden	golden	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	axe	axe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
6	on	on	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	bank	bank	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	sprang	spring	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
11	back	back	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
12	into	into	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	pool	pool	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lay** | past | Mercury | the golden axe |  | the bank |  |  | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent axe=Theme on bank=Destination |
| 2 | **spring back** | past | Mercury *not said here* |  |  | the pool |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme into pool=Destination |

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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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