---
title: But there a hungry Fox spied him, and in a twinkling, ate him up, bo… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: But there a hungry Fox spied him, and in a twinkling, ate him up, both shell and claw. Who acts: hungry Fox. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Fox and the Crab, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/95/5/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Aesop for Children](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/) / [The Fox and the Crab](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/95/) / 5

# The Aesop for Children, The Fox and the Crab, sentence 5

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But there a hungry Fox spied him, and in a twinkling, ate him up, both shell and claw.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** hungry Fox · **What happens:** spy, eat up · **To what, where:** him, Fox, twinkling

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Fox and the Crab. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (hungry Fox), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg19994:95:5
# text = But there a hungry Fox spied him, and in a twinkling, ate him up, both shell and claw.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	6	expl	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	hungry	hungry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	Fox	Fox	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	spied	spy	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
10	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	twinkling	twinkling	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
14	ate	eat	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
15	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	obj	_	_
16	up	up	ADP	RP	_	14	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
18	both	both	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc:preconj	_	_
19	shell	shell	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
21	claw	claw	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **spy** | past | a hungry Fox | him *= he* |  | there |  | shell and claw *obl* | vn sight-30.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer he=Stimulus |
| 2 | **eat up** | past | a hungry Fox *not said here* | Fox |  | a twinkling |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Patient |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/95/4/)
- next →: [sentence 6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/95/6/)
- ↑ back to [The Fox and the Crab](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/95/)