---
title: She cannot make the bones burn, nor the sieve hold water, but when t… — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: She cannot make the bones burn, nor the sieve hold water, but when the sparrow offers its advice she only boxes its ears. Who acts: present, bones, sieve, sparrow. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter II. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 11, with its dependency 
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/29/113/)

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# Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Chapter II. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 11, sentence 113

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She cannot make the bones burn, nor the sieve hold water, but when the sparrow offers its advice she only boxes its ears.

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**Who acts:** present, bones, sieve, sparrow, advice · **What happens:** not make, burn, hold, offer, box · **To what, where:** water

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This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter II. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 11. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (present, bones, sieve, sparrow), 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:pg22373:29:113
# text = She cannot make the bones burn, nor the sieve hold water, but when the sparrow offers its advice she only boxes its ears.
1	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	make	make	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	bones	bone	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
7	burn	burn	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
9	nor	nor	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	12	cc	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	sieve	sieve	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
12	hold	hold	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	conj	_	_
13	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
15	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
16	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	19	mark	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	sparrow	sparrow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nsubj	_	_
19	offers	offer	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
20	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	21	nmod:poss	_	_
21	advice	advice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	24	nsubj	_	_
22	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	24	nsubj	_	_
23	only	only	ADV	RB	_	24	advmod	_	_
24	boxes	box	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	parataxis	_	_
25	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	26	nmod:poss	_	_
26	ears	ear	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	24	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **make** | can | present |  |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **burn** | present | the bones |  |  |  |  |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **hold** | present | the sieve | water |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent water=Theme |
| 4 | **offer** | present | the sparrow |  |  |  |  |  | vn future\_having-13.3 «NP V NP.theme (PP)»: agent=Agent |
| 5 | **box** |  | sieve's advice |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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