---
title: "'Whoever is that?' say they. — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: "'Whoever is that?' say they. Who acts: Whoever, you. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter III. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 2, 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/pg22373/36/141/)

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# Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Chapter III. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 2, sentence 141

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"'Whoever is that?' say they.

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**Who acts:** Whoever, you · **What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** that, merchants · **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 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Whoever, you), 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:pg22373:36:141
# text = "'Whoever is that?' say they.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	Whoever	whoever	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	5	nsubj	_	_
4	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
5	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
8	say	say	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | Whoever | that |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | imperative | you *not said here* | merchants *= merchant* |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent they=Topic |

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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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