---
title: The sons, after his death, took their spades and mattocks and carefu… — Three hundred Aesop’s fables · tree and pragmatics
description: The sons, after his death, took their spades and mattocks and carefully dug over every portion of their land. Who acts: sons, monster. A sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 4, 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/pg21/6/10/)

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# Three hundred Aesop’s fables, Aesop’s Fables, part 4, sentence 10

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The sons, after his death, took their spades and mattocks and carefully dug over every portion of their land.

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**Who acts:** sons, monster · **What happens:** take, dig, die · **To what, where:** spades, portion

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This is a sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sons, monster), 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:pg21:6:10
# text = The sons, after his death, took their spades and mattocks and carefully dug over every portion of their land.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	sons	son	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
4	after	after	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	death	death	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
8	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	spades	spade	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	mattocks	mattock	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	conj	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
14	carefully	carefully	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	dug	dig	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	8	conj	_	_
16	over	over	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	every	every	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	18	det	_	_
18	portion	portion	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	_
19	of	of	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	21	nmod:poss	_	_
21	land	land	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past | the sons after monster's death | sons's spades and mattocks |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent spade=Theme |
| 2 | **dig** | participle | the sons after monster's death *not said here* |  |  | every portion of sons's land |  | carefully *property* | vn hunt-35.1 «NP V PP.theme PP.location»: agent=Agent over portion=Location |
| 3 | **die** |  | monster |  |  |  |  |  | nom death «event intransitive»: poss=agent |

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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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