---
title: AN ASS besought a Horse to spare him a small portion of his feed. — Three hundred Aesop’s fables · tree and pragmatics
description: AN ASS besought a Horse to spare him a small portion of his feed. Who acts: ASS. A sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 13, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Three hundred Aesop’s fables, Aesop’s Fables, part 13, sentence 85

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AN ASS besought a Horse to spare him a small portion of his feed.

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**Who acts:** ASS · **What happens:** beseech, spare · **To what, where:** Horse

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This is a sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 13. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (ASS), 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:pg21:15:85
# text = AN ASS besought a Horse to spare him a small portion of his feed.
1	AN	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	ASS	ass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	besought	beseech	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	Horse	horse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	spare	spare	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	advcl	_	_
8	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	small	small	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	portion	portion	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	feed	feed	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **beseech** | past | a ASS | a Horse |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **spare** | to-infinitive | a ASS *not said here* |  | Horse |  |  |  | vn bill-54.5 «NP V NP NP.asset»: agent=Agent he=Recipient portion=Asset |

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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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