---
title: A THIEF came in the night to break into a house. — Three hundred Aesop’s fables · tree and pragmatics
description: A THIEF came in the night to break into a house. Who acts: THIEF. 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.
---

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# Three hundred Aesop’s fables, Aesop’s Fables, part 10, sentence 2

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A THIEF came in the night to break into a house.

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**Who acts:** THIEF · **What happens:** come, break · **To what, where:** house

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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 (THIEF), 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:pg21:12:2
# text = A THIEF came in the night to break into a house.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	THIEF	thief	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	in	in	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	break	break	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	advcl	_	_
9	into	into	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past | a THIEF |  |  |  | night |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **break** | to-infinitive | a THIEF *not said here* |  |  |  |  | into a house *result* | vn break-45.1 «NP V PP.result»: agent=Patient into house=Result |

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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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