Three hundred Aesop’s fables, Aesop’s Fables, part 3, sentence 38

THE OXEN once upon a time sought to destroy the Butchers, who practiced a trade destructive to their race.

Who acts: OXEN, Butchers · What happens: seek, destroy, practice, race · To what, where: Butchers, trade

This is a sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (OXEN, Butchers), 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	THE	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	2 OXEN	det
2	OXEN	oxen	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 sought	nsubj
3	once	once	ADV	NumForm=Word NumType=Mult	2 OXEN	advmod
4	upon	upon	ADP	_	6 time	case
5	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	6 time	det
6	time	time	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 OXEN	nmod
7	sought	seek	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	root	root
8	to	to	PART	_	9 destroy	mark
9	destroy	destroy	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	7 sought	xcomp
10	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	11 Butchers	det
11	Butchers	butcher	NOUN	Number=Plur	9 destroy	obj
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	14 practiced	punct
13	who	who	PRON	PronType=Rel	14 practiced	nsubj
14	practiced	practice	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	11 Butchers	acl:relcl
15	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	16 trade	det
16	trade	trade	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 practiced	obj
17	destructive	destructive	ADJ	Degree=Pos	14 practiced	xcomp
18	to	to	ADP	_	20 race	case
19	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	20 race	nmod:poss
20	race	race	NOUN	Number=Sing	17 destructive	obl
21	.	.	PUNCT	_	7 sought	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	seek	participle	the OXEN upon a time			tree rules
2	destroy not said to happen	to-infinitive	the OXEN upon a time not said here	the Butchers		vn destroy-44 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent butcher=Patient
3	practice	past	the Butchers	a trade	destructive property	vn rehearse-26.8-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent trade=Theme
4	race		Oxen			nom race «event intransitive»: poss=agent

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/pg21/5/38/