Three hundred Aesop’s fables, Aesop’s Fables, part 14, sentence 67

It matters little if those who are inferior to us in merit should be like us in outside appearances.

Who acts: It, those · What happens: matter, be · To what, where: merit, us, outside appearances

This is a sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 14. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (It, those), 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	It	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 matters	nsubj
2	matters	matter	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	2 matters	xcomp
4	if	if	SCONJ	_	8 inferior	mark
5	those	that	PRON	Number=Plur PronType=Dem	8 inferior	nsubj
6	who	who	PRON	PronType=Rel	8 inferior	nsubj
7	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	8 inferior	cop
8	inferior	inferior	ADJ	Degree=Pos	2 matters	advcl
9	to	to	ADP	_	10 us	case
10	us	we	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	8 inferior	obl
11	in	in	ADP	_	12 merit	case
12	merit	merit	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 matters	obl
13	should	should	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	16 us	aux
14	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	16 us	cop
15	like	like	ADP	_	16 us	case
16	us	we	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	12 merit	nmod
17	in	in	ADP	_	19 appearances	case
18	outside	outside	ADJ	Degree=Pos	19 appearances	amod
19	appearances	appearance	NOUN	Number=Plur	16 us	nmod
20	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 matters	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	to whom	where	other	roles by
1	matter	present	It		merit	little property	vn matter-91 «NP V»: agent=Stimulus
2	is a condition, not said to happen	present	those	us		inferior property	tree rules
3	is	should			outside appearances	like us	tree rules

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: «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.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg21/16/67/