The Aesop for Children, The Fox and the Hedgehog, sentence 8
_Better to bear a lesser evil than to risk a greater in removing it.
What happens: bear, risk, remove · To what, where: lesser evil, greater, evil
This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Fox and the Hedgehog. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.
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
The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)
| # | word | lemma | UPOS | features | head | relation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | _ | _ | PUNCT | _ | 2 Better | punct |
| 2 | Better | good | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | root | root |
| 3 | to | to | PART | _ | 4 bear | mark |
| 4 | bear | bear | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 2 Better | advcl |
| 5 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 7 evil | det |
| 6 | lesser | less | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 7 evil | amod |
| 7 | evil | evil | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 bear | obj |
| 8 | than | than | SCONJ | _ | 10 risk | mark |
| 9 | to | to | PART | _ | 10 risk | mark |
| 10 | risk | risk | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 4 bear | advcl |
| 11 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 12 greater | det |
| 12 | greater | great | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 10 risk | obj |
| 13 | in | in | SCONJ | _ | 14 removing | mark |
| 14 | removing | remove | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 10 risk | advcl |
| 15 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 14 removing | obj |
| 16 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 Better | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | bear | to-infinitive | a lesser evil | vn birth-28.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent evil=Patient | |||||
| 2 | risk | to-infinitive | a greater | vn risk-94-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent great=Pivot | |||||
| 3 | remove | gerund | evil | vn fire-10.10 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
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.
Text: «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, Project Gutenberg book 19994 (public domain in the USA). Tree: Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg19994/108/8/