---
title: A CROW in great want of food saw a Serpent asleep in a sunny nook, a… — Three hundred Aesop’s fables · tree and pragmatics
description: A CROW in great want of food saw a Serpent asleep in a sunny nook, and flying down, greedily seized him. Who acts: CROW. A sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 14, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Three hundred Aesop’s fables, Aesop’s Fables, part 14, sentence 95

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A CROW in great want of food saw a Serpent asleep in a sunny nook, and flying down, greedily seized him.

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**Who acts:** CROW · **What happens:** see, fly down, seize, want · **To what, where:** sunny nook, pig, food

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This is a sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 14. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (CROW), 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:pg21:16:95
# text = A CROW in great want of food saw a Serpent asleep in a sunny nook, and flying down, greedily seized him.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	CROW	crow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
3	in	in	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	want	want	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	food	food	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
8	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	Serpent	Serpent	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	_
11	asleep	asleep	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	xcomp	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	sunny	sunny	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	nook	nook	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
18	flying	fly	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	advcl	_	_
19	down	down	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
21	greedily	greedily	ADV	RB	_	22	advmod	_	_
22	seized	seize	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	conj	_	_
23	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	22	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **see** | past | a CROW in great want of food |  |  | a sunny nook |  | asleep *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **fly down** | gerund | a CROW in great want of food *not said here* |  |  |  |  | down *property* | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **seize** | past | a CROW in great want of food *not said here* | pig |  |  |  | greedily *property* | vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Theme |
| 4 | **want** |  |  | food |  |  |  |  | nom want «state transitive»: of=patient |

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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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