---
title: It is surely better for me to give the water to them than to you.” — Three hundred Aesop’s fables · tree and pragmatics
description: It is surely better for me to give the water to them than to you.” Who acts: It, me. 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 40

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It is surely better for me to give the water to them than to you.”

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**Who acts:** It, me · **What happens:** be, give · **To what, where:** water, Wasps

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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 (It, me), 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:pg21:13:40
# text = It is surely better for me to give the water to them than to you.”
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	surely	surely	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	0	root	_	_
5	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
6	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	give	give	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	csubj	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	to	to	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obl	_	_
13	than	than	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	to	to	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | It |  |  |  |  | good, surely *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **give** | to-infinitive | me | the water | Wasps *= wasp* |  |  | than you | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent water=Theme to they=Recipient |

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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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