---
title: Then they wept and wailed and called on Mercury to help them. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: Then they wept and wailed and called on Mercury to help them. Who acts: treasures. 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 22

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Then they wept and wailed and called on Mercury to help them.

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**Who acts:** treasures · **What happens:** weep, wail, call, help · **To what, where:** Mercury, treasures · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (treasures), 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:pg19994:93:22
# text = Then they wept and wailed and called on Mercury to help them.
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	wept	weep	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
5	wailed	wail	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	called	call	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	conj	_	_
8	on	on	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	Mercury	Mercury	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	help	help	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	advcl	_	_
12	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **weep** | past | treasures *= treasure* |  |  |  | then |  | vn breathe-40.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **wail** | past | treasures *= treasure* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **call** | participle | treasures *= treasure* *not said here* |  |  | Mercury |  |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **help** | to-infinitive | treasures *= treasure* *not said here* | treasures *= treasure* |  |  |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Beneficiary |

<!-- .note -->
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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