---
title: The Eagle could not reach the Serpent, neither with beak nor claws. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: The Eagle could not reach the Serpent, neither with beak nor claws. Who acts: Eagle. 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 2

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The Eagle could not reach the Serpent, neither with beak nor claws.

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**Who acts:** Eagle · **What happens:** not reach · **To what, where:** Serpent

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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 (Eagle), 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:pg19994:96:2
# text = The Eagle could not reach the Serpent, neither with beak nor claws.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Eagle	Eagle	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	reach	reach	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	Serpent	serpent	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	neither	neither	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	11	cc:preconj	_	_
10	with	with	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	beak	beak	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
12	nor	nor	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	13	cc	_	_
13	claws	claw	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **reach** | could | the Eagle | the Serpent |  |  |  | with beak nor claws | vn body\_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Agent serpent=Theme |

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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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