---
title: Still the Tortoise lay low and gave no sign. — Folk tales from Tibet · tree and pragmatics
description: Still the Tortoise lay low and gave no sign. Who acts: you, Tortoise. A sentence of «Folk tales from Tibet» by William Frederick Travers, Sir O'Connor, The Story of the Tortoise and the Monkey., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg75000/21/49/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Folk tales from Tibet](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg75000/) / [The Story of the Tortoise and the Monk…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg75000/21/) / 49

# Folk tales from Tibet, The Story of the Tortoise and the Monkey., sentence 49

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Still the Tortoise lay low and gave no sign.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you, Tortoise · **What happens:** still, lie, give · **To what, where:** sign

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Folk tales from Tibet» by William Frederick Travers, Sir O'Connor, The Story of the Tortoise and the Monkey.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, Tortoise), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg75000:21:49
# text = Still the Tortoise lay low and gave no sign.
1	Still	still	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	Tortoise	tortoise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	lay	lie	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	1	parataxis	_	_
5	low	low	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	xcomp	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	gave	give	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
8	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	9	det	_	_
9	sign	sign	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **still** | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn subjugate-42.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **lie** | past | the Tortoise |  |  |  |  | low *property* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **give** | past | the Tortoise *not said here* | no sign |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent sign=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «Folk tales from Tibet» by William Frederick Travers, Sir O'Connor, Project Gutenberg book 75000 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 48](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg75000/21/48/)
- next →: [sentence 50](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg75000/21/50/)
- ↑ back to [The Story of the Tortoise and the Monkey.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg75000/21/)