---
title: But on the way he bethought himself, and decided that no man can run… — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: But on the way he bethought himself, and decided that no man can run faster than a river. Who acts: trace, man. 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 clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/38/138/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collecti…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/) / [Chapter III. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/38/) / 138

# Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Chapter III. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 4, sentence 138

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But on the way he bethought himself, and decided that no man can run faster than a river.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** trace, man · **What happens:** bethink, decide, run · **To what, where:** trace, way · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (trace, man), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg22373:3033`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg22373:38:138
# text = But on the way he bethought himself, and decided that no man can run faster than a river.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	on	on	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	bethought	bethink	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	6	obj	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	decided	decide	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
11	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
12	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	13	det	_	_
13	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
14	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	run	run	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
16	faster	fast	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	15	advmod	_	_
17	than	than	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	river	river	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	_
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **bethink** | past | trace | trace |  | the way |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **decide** | past | trace *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn correspond-36.1-1 «NP V what S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **run** | can | no man |  |  |  |  | fast *property* | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Project Gutenberg book 22373 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 137](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/38/137/)
- next →: [sentence 139](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/38/139/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter III. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/38/)