---
title: "We might borrow, but who would trust us?" says he. — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: "We might borrow, but who would trust us?" says he. Who acts: We. 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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# Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Chapter III. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 2, sentence 150

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"We might borrow, but who would trust us?" says he.

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**Who acts:** We · **What happens:** borrow, trust, say · **To what, where:** us, man · **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 (We), 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:pg22373:36:150
# text = "We might borrow, but who would trust us?" says he.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	might	might	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	borrow	borrow	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
6	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
7	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	9	nsubj	_	_
8	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	trust	trust	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	ccomp	_	_
10	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	9	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
13	says	say	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **borrow** *in a quote* | might | We |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **trust** *in a quote* | would |  |  | us |  |  |  | vn conjecture-29.5-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent we=Theme |
| 3 | **say** *speech: ask* | present |  | man |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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