---
title: The Wasps said that they would keep guard and drive off thieves with… — Three hundred Aesop’s fables · tree and pragmatics
description: The Wasps said that they would keep guard and drive off thieves with their stings. Who acts: Wasps. A sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 11, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Three hundred Aesop’s fables, Aesop’s Fables, part 11, sentence 38

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The Wasps said that they would keep guard and drive off thieves with their stings.

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**Who acts:** Wasps · **What happens:** say, keep, drive off, sting · **To what, where:** guard, thieves · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 11. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Wasps), 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:pg21:13:38
# text = The Wasps said that they would keep guard and drive off thieves with their stings.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Wasps	Wasp	PROPN	NNPS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
5	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	ccomp	_	_
8	guard	guard	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	drive	drive	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
11	off	off	ADP	RP	_	10	compound:prt	_	_
12	thieves	thief	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obj	_	_
13	with	with	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	stings	sting	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the Wasps |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **keep** | would | Wasps *= wasp* | guard |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent guard=Theme |
| 3 | **drive off** | present | the Wasps *not said here* | thieves |  |  |  | with Wasps's stings | vn nonvehicle-51.4.2-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme thief=Trajectory |
| 4 | **sting** |  | Wasps *= wasp* |  |  |  |  |  | nom sting «state transitive»: poss=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:** «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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