---
title: From morning till night the peasant would struggle, like a fish tryi… — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: From morning till night the peasant would struggle, like a fish trying to break through ice, but nothing came of it all. Who acts: peasant, fish, nothing. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter III. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 1, with its dependency tree and 
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/35/154/)

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# Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Chapter III. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 1, sentence 154

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From morning till night the peasant would struggle, like a fish trying to break through ice, but nothing came of it all.

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**Who acts:** peasant, fish, nothing · **What happens:** struggle, try, break, come · **To what, where:** fish, ice

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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 (peasant, fish, nothing), 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:pg22373:35:154
# text = From morning till night the peasant would struggle, like a fish trying to break through ice, but nothing came of it all.
1	From	from	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	morning	morning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
3	till	till	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	peasant	peasant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
7	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	struggle	struggle	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	like	like	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	fish	fish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
13	trying	try	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	12	acl	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	break	break	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	xcomp	_	_
16	through	through	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	ice	ice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
19	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
20	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	21	nsubj	_	_
21	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	parataxis	_	_
22	of	of	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
23	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	obl	_	_
24	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	21	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **struggle** | would | the peasant | a fish |  |  | morning |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **try** | gerund | a fish *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **break** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | a fish *not said here* |  |  | ice |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme through ice=Location |
| 4 | **come** | past | nothing |  |  |  |  | of ice | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme of it=Initial\_Location |

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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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