---
title: The Serpent had the advantage, and was about to strangle the bird. — Three hundred Aesop’s fables · tree and pragmatics
description: The Serpent had the advantage, and was about to strangle the bird. Who acts: Serpent. A sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 9, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg21/11/32/)

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# Three hundred Aesop’s fables, Aesop’s Fables, part 9, sentence 32

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The Serpent had the advantage, and was about to strangle the bird.

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**Who acts:** Serpent · **What happens:** have, be, strangle · **To what, where:** advantage, bird

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This is a sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 9. 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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**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:pg21:11:32
# text = The Serpent had the advantage, and was about to strangle the bird.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Serpent	Serpent	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	advantage	advantage	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
9	about	about	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	conj	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	strangle	strangle	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	xcomp	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | the Serpent | the advantage |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent advantage=Patient |
| 2 | **is** | past | the Serpent *not said here* |  |  |  |  | about *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **strangle** | to-infinitive | the Serpent *not said here* | the bird |  |  |  |  | vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bird=Patient |

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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:** «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Project Gutenberg book 21 (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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