---
title: Two of them had their wits about them, but the third was a fool. — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: Two of them had their wits about them, but the third was a fool. Who acts: Two, third. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter I. INTRODUCTORY, part 6, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Chapter I. INTRODUCTORY, part 6, sentence 136

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Two of them had their wits about them, but the third was a fool.

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**Who acts:** Two, third · **What happens:** have, be · **To what, where:** wits, fool

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This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter I. INTRODUCTORY, part 6. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Two, third), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg22373:726`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg22373:16:136
# text = Two of them had their wits about them, but the third was a fool.
1	Two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	4	nsubj	_	_
2	of	of	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
3	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	1	nmod	_	_
4	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	wits	wit	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
7	about	about	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obl	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
10	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	third	third	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	15	nsubj	_	_
13	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	fool	fool	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	_
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | Two of sons | sons's wits |  |  |  | about sons *= son* | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent wit=Patient |
| 2 | **is a** | past | the third | a fool |  |  |  |  | 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:** «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Project Gutenberg book 22373 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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