---
title: He couldn't help doing so. — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: He couldn't help doing so. Who acts: Prince. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter II. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/22/50/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collecti…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/) / [Chapter II. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/22/) / 50

# Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Chapter II. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 4, sentence 50

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He couldn't help doing so.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Prince · **What happens:** not help, do

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter II. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Prince), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg22373:22:50
# text = He couldn't help doing so.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	help	help	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	doing	do	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	4	xcomp	_	_
6	so	so	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **help** | could | Prince |  |  |  |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 2 | **do** *not said to happen* | gerund | Prince *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 49](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/22/49/)
- next →: [sentence 51](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/22/51/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter II. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/22/)