---
title: But neither knife nor axe could penetrate its hide, so they tried to… — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: But neither knife nor axe could penetrate its hide, so they tried to consume it with fire. Who acts: knife, ministers. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter III. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/35/106/)

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# Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Chapter III. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 1, sentence 106

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But neither knife nor axe could penetrate its hide, so they tried to consume it with fire.

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**Who acts:** knife, ministers · **What happens:** penetrate, try, consume · **To what, where:** hide

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This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter III. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (knife, ministers), 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:pg22373:35:106
# text = But neither knife nor axe could penetrate its hide, so they tried to consume it with fire.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
2	neither	neither	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	3	det	_	_
3	knife	knife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
4	nor	nor	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	5	cc	_	_
5	axe	axe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	conj	_	_
6	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	penetrate	penetrate	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
8	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	hide	hide	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	so	so	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
12	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	parataxis	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	consume	consume	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	xcomp	_	_
16	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	obj	_	_
17	with	with	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	fire	fire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **penetrate** | could | neither knife nor axe | knife's hide |  |  |  |  | vn poke-19 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent hide=Patient |
| 2 | **try** | past | ministers *= minister* |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **consume** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | ministers *= minister* *not said here* | hide |  |  |  | with fire | vn consume-66 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Asset |

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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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