---
title: Becoming thirsty on the way, he filled his horn at a spring, and was… — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: Becoming thirsty on the way, he filled his horn at a spring, and was about to drink. Who acts: Serpent. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Serpent and the Eagle, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Serpent and the Eagle, sentence 11

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Becoming thirsty on the way, he filled his horn at a spring, and was about to drink.

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**Who acts:** Serpent · **What happens:** become, fill, be, drink · **To what, where:** way, horn

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

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg19994:752`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg19994:96:11
# text = Becoming thirsty on the way, he filled his horn at a spring, and was about to drink.
1	Becoming	become	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	advcl	_	_
2	thirsty	thirsty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	1	xcomp	_	_
3	on	on	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	_
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	filled	fill	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	horn	horn	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	at	at	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	spring	spring	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
16	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	_
17	about	about	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	conj	_	_
18	to	to	PART	TO	_	19	mark	_	_
19	drink	drink	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	17	xcomp	_	_
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **become** | gerund | Serpent *not said here* |  |  | the way |  | thirsty *property* | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient |
| 2 | **fill** | past | Serpent | Serpent's horn |  |  | spring |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent horn=Patient |
| 3 | **is** | past | Serpent *not said here* |  |  |  |  | about *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **drink** | to-infinitive | Serpent *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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