---
title: "Which dost thou tell me to choose--riches, or a good wife?" — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: "Which dost thou tell me to choose--riches, or a good wife?" Who acts: thou. 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 55

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"Which dost thou tell me to choose--riches, or a good wife?"

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**Who acts:** thou · **What happens:** do, tell, choose · **To what, where:** good wife, orphan, riches · **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 (thou), 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:pg22373:16:55
# text = "Which dost thou tell me to choose--riches, or a good wife?"
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	3	nsubj	_	_
3	dost	do	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Style=Arch|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	thou	thou	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=2|PronType=Prs|Style=Arch	5	nsubj	_	_
5	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
6	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	iobj	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	choose	choose	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	riches	rich	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
12	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** *in a quote* | present |  | a good wife |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | infinitive | thou |  | orphan |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent i=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 3 | **choose** *not said to happen, in a quote* | to-infinitive | thou *not said here* | riches |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent rich=Theme |

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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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