---
title: “Pray, honest friend,” said a citizen, “is that Ass your own?” — Three hundred Aesop’s fables · tree and pragmatics
description: “Pray, honest friend,” said a citizen, “is that Ass your own?” Who acts: Pray. 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 54

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“Pray, honest friend,” said a citizen, “is that Ass your own?”

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**Who acts:** Pray · **What happens:** say, be · **To what, where:** citizen, Ass · **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 (Pray), 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:pg21:9:54
# text = “Pray, honest friend,” said a citizen, “is that Ass your own?”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Pray	Pray	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
4	honest	honest	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	friend	friend	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	citizen	citizen	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
12	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
14	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
15	Ass	Ass	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	_
16	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
17	own	own	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | Pray | a citizen |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent citizen=Topic |
| 2 | **is a** *in a quote* | present |  | Ass |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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