---
title: "Suppose I go to town, and ask my brother whether he won't do someth… — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: "Suppose I go to town, and ask my brother whether he won't do something to help us." Who acts: I, fish. 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/pg22373/35/156/)

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# Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Chapter III. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 1, sentence 156

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"Suppose I go to town, and ask my brother whether he won't do something to help us."

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**Who acts:** I, fish · **What happens:** go, ask, not do, help · **To what, where:** town, brother, something, us · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (I, fish), 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:pg22373:35:156
# text = "Suppose I go to town, and ask my brother whether he won't do something to help us."
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Suppose	suppose	INTJ	UH	_	4	discourse	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	go	go	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	town	town	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	ask	ask	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
10	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	brother	brother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	whether	whether	SCONJ	IN	_	16	mark	_	_
13	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
14	wo	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	16	advmod	_	_
16	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	ccomp	_	_
17	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	16	obj	_	_
18	to	to	PART	TO	_	19	mark	_	_
19	help	help	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	17	acl	_	_
20	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	19	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** *in a quote* | present | I |  |  | town |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to town=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* *in a quote* | infinitive | I *not said here* |  | my brother |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S»: agent=Agent brother=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 3 | **not** **do** *in a quote* | future | fish | something |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent something=Eventuality |
| 4 | **help** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | fish *not said here* | something *not said here* | us |  |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent we=Beneficiary |

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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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