---
title: A BAT who fell upon the ground and was caught by a Weasel pleaded to… — Three hundred Aesop’s fables · tree and pragmatics
description: A BAT who fell upon the ground and was caught by a Weasel pleaded to be spared his life. Who acts: BAT, Weasel. A sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg21/3/35/)

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# Three hundred Aesop’s fables, Aesop’s Fables, part 1, sentence 35

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A BAT who fell upon the ground and was caught by a Weasel pleaded to be spared his life.

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**Who acts:** BAT, Weasel · **What happens:** fall, catch, plead, spare · **To what, where:** ground, life

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This is a sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (BAT, Weasel), 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:pg21:3:35
# text = A BAT who fell upon the ground and was caught by a Weasel pleaded to be spared his life.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	BAT	bat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
3	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	4	nsubj	_	_
4	fell	fall	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	acl:relcl	_	_
5	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux:pass	_	_
10	caught	catch	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	conj	_	_
11	by	by	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	Weasel	Weasel	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
14	pleaded	plead	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
16	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	17	aux:pass	_	_
17	spared	spare	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	14	xcomp	_	_
18	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	19	nmod:poss	_	_
19	life	life	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fall** | past | a BAT |  |  | the ground |  |  | vn occur-48.3 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme upon ground=Location |
| 2 | **catch** | past · passive | a Weasel |  |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **plead** *speech: request* | past | a BAT |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **spare** | to-infinitive · passive | a BAT *not said here* | Grasshopper's life |  |  |  |  | vn bill-54.5 «NP V NP NP.asset»: life=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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