---
title: He then gave them an Eel to govern them. — Three hundred Aesop’s fables · tree and pragmatics
description: He then gave them an Eel to govern them. Who acts: Jupiter. A sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 2, 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/pg21/4/141/)

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# Three hundred Aesop’s fables, Aesop’s Fables, part 2, sentence 141

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He then gave them an Eel to govern them.

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**Who acts:** Jupiter · **What happens:** give, govern · **To what, where:** Eel, Frogs

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This is a sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Jupiter), 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:pg21:4:141
# text = He then gave them an Eel to govern them.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	_
3	gave	give	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	iobj	_	_
5	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	Eel	eel	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	govern	govern	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	advcl	_	_
9	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **give** | past | Jupiter | a Eel | Frogs *= frog* |  | then |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent they=Recipient eel=Theme |
| 2 | **govern** | to-infinitive | Jupiter *not said here* | Frogs *= frog* |  |  |  |  | vn supervision-95.2.2 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent they=Theme |

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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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