---
title: That monster is not so much a bird as a flying dragon. " — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: That monster is not so much a bird as a flying dragon. " Who acts: monster. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter II. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 3, 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 II. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 3, sentence 94

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That monster is not so much a bird as a flying dragon. "

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**Who acts:** monster · **What happens:** not be, fly · **To what, where:** bird

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This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter II. MYTHOLOGICAL, 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 (monster), 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:pg22373:21:94
# text = That monster is not so much a bird as a flying dragon. "
1	That	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	2	det	_	_
2	monster	monster	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	8	advmod	_	_
5	so	so	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	much	much	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
9	as	as	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	flying	fly	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	12	amod	_	_
12	dragon	dragon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
14	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is a** | present | that monster | a bird |  |  |  | as a flying dragon | tree rules |
| 2 | **fly** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=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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