---
title: The poor beast replied, not without a touch of reason: “Why do you a… — Three hundred Aesop’s fables · tree and pragmatics
description: The poor beast replied, not without a touch of reason: “Why do you ask me? Who acts: poor beast. A sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 7, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Three hundred Aesop’s fables, Aesop’s Fables, part 7, sentence 38

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The poor beast replied, not without a touch of reason: “Why do you ask me?

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**Who acts:** poor beast · **What happens:** reply, ask, touch · **To what, where:** poor beast, me, reason · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 7. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor beast), 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:pg21:9:38
# text = The poor beast replied, not without a touch of reason: “Why do you ask me?
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	beast	beast	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nsubj	_	_
4	replied	reply	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
6	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	9	advmod	_	_
7	without	without	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	touch	touch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	advcl	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	reason	reason	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	17	punct	_	_
13	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	17	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	17	advmod	_	_
15	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
16	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
17	ask	ask	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
18	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	17	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	17	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reply** *speech: ask* | participle |  | the poor beast *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* *in a quote* | present · do-support | the poor beast |  | me |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=Recipient |
| 3 | **touch** |  |  | reason |  |  |  |  | nom touch «event transitive»: of=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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