---
title: Fearing for their lives, the Mice kept themselves close in their hol… — Three hundred Aesop’s fables · tree and pragmatics
description: Fearing for their lives, the Mice kept themselves close in their holes. Who acts: Mice. 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 65

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Fearing for their lives, the Mice kept themselves close in their holes.

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**Who acts:** Mice · **What happens:** fear, keep · **To what, where:** Mice

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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 (Mice), 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:pg21:9:65
# text = Fearing for their lives, the Mice kept themselves close in their holes.
1	Fearing	fear	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	advcl	_	_
2	for	for	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	lives	life	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	1	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	Mice	mouse	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
8	kept	keep	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	themselves	themselves	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	8	obj	_	_
10	close	close	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	xcomp	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	holes	hole	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fear** | gerund | the Mice *not said here* |  |  |  |  | for Cat's lives | vn admire-31.2-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer for life=Attribute |
| 2 | **keep** | past | the Mice | Mice *= mouse* |  |  |  | close *property* | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent themselves=Theme |

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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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