---
title: While thus looking upwards, he unknowingly trod upon a Viper asleep… — Three hundred Aesop’s fables · tree and pragmatics
description: While thus looking upwards, he unknowingly trod upon a Viper asleep just before his feet. Who acts: Viper. A sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 10, 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/pg21/12/118/)

<!-- 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/) / [Three hundred Aesop’s fables](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg21/) / [Aesop’s Fables, part 10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg21/12/) / 118

# Three hundred Aesop’s fables, Aesop’s Fables, part 10, sentence 118

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
While thus looking upwards, he unknowingly trod upon a Viper asleep just before his feet.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Viper · **What happens:** look, tread

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 10. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Viper), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg21:1020`): 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:pg21:12:118
# text = While thus looking upwards, he unknowingly trod upon a Viper asleep just before his feet.
1	While	while	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
2	thus	thus	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
3	looking	look	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	advcl	_	_
4	upwards	upwards	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
7	unknowingly	unknowingly	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	trod	tread	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	Viper	viper	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
12	asleep	asleep	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
13	just	just	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
14	before	before	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	feet	foot	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl	_	_
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **look** | gerund | Viper *not said here* |  |  |  |  | thus, upwards *property* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
| 2 | **tread** | past | Viper |  |  |  | before Viper's feet | upon a Viper; unknowingly *property* | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme upon viper=Trajectory |

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

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 117](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg21/12/117/)
- next →: [sentence 119](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg21/12/119/)
- ↑ back to [Aesop’s Fables, part 10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg21/12/)