---
title: "Why there's Need!" replies his wife with a bitter laugh. " — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: "Why there's Need!" replies his wife with a bitter laugh. " Who acts: Need, wife. 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 151

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"Why there's Need!" replies his wife with a bitter laugh. "

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**Who acts:** Need, wife · **What happens:** be, reply · **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 (Need, wife), 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:pg22373:36:151
# text = "Why there's Need!" replies his wife with a bitter laugh. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	4	advmod	_	_
3	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	4	expl	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	's	be	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	advcl	_	_
5	Need	need	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
8	replies	reply	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	with	with	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	bitter	bitter	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	laugh	laugh	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
16	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** *in a quote* | present | Need |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **reply** *speech: express* | present | Need's wife |  |  |  |  | with a bitter laugh | vn respond-113 «NP V PP.predicate»: agent=Agent with laugh=Eventuality |

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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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