---
title: The monkey replied laughingly that he couldn’t afford to lose his li… — Japanese Fairy Tales, by Yei Theodora Ozaki · tree and pragmatics
description: The monkey replied laughingly that he couldn’t afford to lose his liver: it was too precious. Who acts: monkey, liver. A sentence of «Japanese Fairy Tales, by Yei Theodora Ozaki», a book of tales from Project Gutenberg with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Japanese Fairy Tales, by Yei Theodora Ozaki, sentence 1958

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The monkey replied laughingly that he couldn’t afford to lose his liver: it was too precious.

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**Who acts:** monkey, liver · **What happens:** reply, not afford, lose, be · **To what, where:** liver · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Japanese Fairy Tales, by Yei Theodora Ozaki», a book of tales from Project Gutenberg. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (monkey, liver), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = gutenberg:pg4018:1958
# text = The monkey replied laughingly that he couldn’t afford to lose his liver: it was too precious.
# source = Project Gutenberg (public domain in the USA), book id in sent_id
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	monkey	monkey	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	laughingly	laughingly	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
5	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
7	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
8	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	9	advmod	_	_
9	afford	afford	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	ccomp	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	lose	lose	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	xcomp	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	liver	liver	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
14	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	18	punct	_	_
15	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
16	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
17	too	too	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	precious	precious	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	parataxis	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | the monkey |  |  |  |  | laughingly *property* | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **not** **afford** | could | monkey |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **lose** | to-infinitive | monkey *not said here* | monkey's liver |  |  |  |  | vn succeed-74-3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent liver=Eventuality |
| 4 | **is** | past | liver |  |  |  |  | precious *property* | 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:** «Japanese Fairy Tales, by Yei Theodora Ozaki», Project Gutenberg book 4018 (public domain in the USA). **Annotation:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`mova-tales-silver-en.conllu`), Apache-2.0 OR MIT: parsed by Mova, patched by a large language model as teacher under UD validation gates. Sentence `gutenberg:pg4018:1958`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the tale's sample read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.3/).

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