---
title: But the Simpleton contradicted them, saying: — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: But the Simpleton contradicted them, saying: Who acts: Simpleton. 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 201

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But the Simpleton contradicted them, saying:

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**Who acts:** Simpleton · **What happens:** contradict, say · **To what, where:** brothers · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Simpleton), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**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 {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg22373:16:201
# text = But the Simpleton contradicted them, saying:
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	Simpleton	Simpleton	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	contradicted	contradict	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
7	saying	say	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **contradict** | past | the Simpleton | brothers *= brother* |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | gerund | the Simpleton *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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