---
title: "Why does this old woman ask me? — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: "Why does this old woman ask me? Who acts: old woman. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter II. MYTHOLOGICAL, 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 II. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 6, sentence 12

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"Why does this old woman ask me?

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**Who acts:** old woman · **What happens:** ask · **To what, where:** Ivan

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This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter II. MYTHOLOGICAL, 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 (old woman), 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:pg22373:24:12
# text = "Why does this old woman ask me?
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	7	advmod	_	_
3	does	do	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
4	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	det	_	_
5	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	ask	ask	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
8	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* *in a quote* | present · do-support | this old woman |  | Ivan |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=Recipient |

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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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