---
title: So he began tearing up oaks and strewing them across the road. — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: So he began tearing up oaks and strewing them across the road. Who acts: prince. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter II. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 14, 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 14, sentence 149

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So he began tearing up oaks and strewing them across the road.

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**Who acts:** prince · **What happens:** begin, tear up, strew · **To what, where:** oaks, sisters, road

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This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter II. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 14. 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.

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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:pg22373:32:149
# text = So he began tearing up oaks and strewing them across the road.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	tearing	tear	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	3	xcomp	_	_
5	up	up	ADP	RP	_	4	compound:prt	_	_
6	oaks	oak	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	strewing	strew	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	4	conj	_	_
9	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	_
10	across	across	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	road	road	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **begin** | past | prince |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **tear up** | gerund | prince *not said here* | oaks |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Initial\_Location oak=Theme |
| 3 | **strew** | gerund | prince *not said here* | sisters *= sister* |  | the road |  |  | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent they=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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