---
title: But the Vulture fell on the Raven; the Raven began to croak before i… — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: But the Vulture fell on the Raven; the Raven began to croak before it had caught up the river Dnieper. Who acts: Vulture, Raven. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter III. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every cl
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/38/111/)

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# Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Chapter III. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 4, sentence 111

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But the Vulture fell on the Raven; the Raven began to croak before it had caught up the river Dnieper.

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**Who acts:** Vulture, Raven · **What happens:** fall, begin, croak, catch up · **To what, where:** Raven, way

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This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter III. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Vulture, Raven), 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:pg22373:38:111
# text = But the Vulture fell on the Raven; the Raven began to croak before it had caught up the river Dnieper.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	Vulture	Vulture	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	fell	fall	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	on	on	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	Raven	raven	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	11	punct	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	Raven	Raven	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
11	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	croak	croak	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	xcomp	_	_
14	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
15	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj:pass	_	_
16	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
17	caught	catch	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	13	advcl	_	_
18	up	up	ADP	RP	_	17	compound:prt	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	river	river	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	_
21	Dnieper	Dnieper	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	20	appos	_	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 | **fall** | past | the Vulture |  |  | the Raven |  |  | vn occur-48.3 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme on raven=Location |
| 2 | **begin** | past | the Raven |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **croak** | to-infinitive | the Raven *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **catch up** | past · perfect · passive |  | way |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP.beneficiary NP»: subject=Beneficiary river=Theme |

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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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