---
title: The first asks, "Why?" — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: The first asks, "Why?" Who acts: first. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter II. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 13, 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 13, sentence 76

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The first asks, "Why?"

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**Who acts:** first · **What happens:** ask

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This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter II. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 13. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (first), 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:pg22373:31:76
# text = The first asks, "Why?"
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	first	first	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	3	nsubj	_	_
3	asks	ask	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | present | the first |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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