---
title: A FOX caught in a trap escaped, but in so doing lost his tail. — Three hundred Aesop’s fables · tree and pragmatics
description: A FOX caught in a trap escaped, but in so doing lost his tail. Who acts: FOX. 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/pg21/4/84/)

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# Three hundred Aesop’s fables, Aesop’s Fables, part 2, sentence 84

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A FOX caught in a trap escaped, but in so doing lost his tail.

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**Who acts:** FOX · **What happens:** catch, escape, lose · **To what, where:** trap, tail

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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 (FOX), 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:pg21:4:84
# text = A FOX caught in a trap escaped, but in so doing lost his tail.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	FOX	fox	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	caught	catch	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
4	in	in	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	trap	trap	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
7	escaped	escape	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
10	in	in	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
11	so	so	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
12	doing	do	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	13	aux:pass	_	_
13	lost	lose	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	conj	_	_
14	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	tail	tail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **catch** | participle | a FOX |  |  | a trap |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **escape** | participle |  | a trap *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **lose** | gerund · do-support | a FOX *not said here* | Fox's tail |  |  |  |  | vn succeed-74-3-1 «NP V NP»: tail=Eventuality |

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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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