---
title: THE ANTS were spending a fine winter’s day drying grain collected in… — Three hundred Aesop’s fables · tree and pragmatics
description: THE ANTS were spending a fine winter’s day drying grain collected in the summertime. Who acts: ANTS. 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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# Three hundred Aesop’s fables, Aesop’s Fables, part 1, sentence 63

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THE ANTS were spending a fine winter’s day drying grain collected in the summertime.

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**Who acts:** ANTS · **What happens:** spend, dry, collect · **To what, where:** grain, summertime

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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 (ANTS), 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:pg21:3:63
# text = THE ANTS were spending a fine winter’s day drying grain collected in the summertime.
1	THE	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	ANTS	ant	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	spending	spend	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	fine	fine	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	winter	winter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	’s	's	PART	POS	_	7	case	_	_
9	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
10	drying	dry	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
11	grain	grain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
12	collected	collect	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	acl	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	summertime	summertime	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **spend** | past · progressive | the ANTS |  |  |  | day |  | vn consume-66-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **dry** | gerund | the ANTS *not said here* | grain |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4-1 «NP V NP ADJ»: agent=Patient grain=Result |
| 3 | **collect** | participle |  | grain *not said here* |  | the summertime |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=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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