---
title: In vain do the fugitives attempt to escape. — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: In vain do the fugitives attempt to escape. Who acts: vain, fugitives. 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/pg22373/35/146/)

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# Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Chapter III. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 1, sentence 146

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In vain do the fugitives attempt to escape.

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**Who acts:** vain, fugitives · **What happens:** do, attempt, escape

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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 (vain, fugitives), 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:pg22373:35:146
# text = In vain do the fugitives attempt to escape.
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	vain	vain	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	do	do	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	fugitives	fugitive	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
6	attempt	attempt	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	ccomp	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	escape	escape	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | present | vain |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **attempt** | present | the fugitives |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **escape** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | the fugitives *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=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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