---
title: Those who seek to please everybody please nobody. — Three hundred Aesop’s fables · tree and pragmatics
description: Those who seek to please everybody please nobody. A sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Three hundred Aesop’s fables, Aesop’s Fables, part 3, sentence 82

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Those who seek to please everybody please nobody.

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**What happens:** seek, please · **To what, where:** everybody

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This is a sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg21:5:82
# text = Those who seek to please everybody please nobody.
1	Those	that	PRON	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	0	root	_	_
2	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	3	nsubj	_	_
3	seek	seek	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	1	acl:relcl	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	please	please	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
6	everybody	everybody	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Tot	5	obj	_	_
7	please	please	INTJ	UH	_	3	discourse	_	_
8	nobody	nobody	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **seek** | present |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **please** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive |  | everybody |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Stimulus everybody=Experiencer |

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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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