---
title: Now, a good way off, Frost had begun cracking, snapping his fingers,… — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: Now, a good way off, Frost had begun cracking, snapping his fingers, and leaping from fir to fir. Who acts: Frost. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter III. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 5, 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/pg22373/39/140/)

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# Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Chapter III. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 5, sentence 140

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Now, a good way off, Frost had begun cracking, snapping his fingers, and leaping from fir to fir.

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**Who acts:** Frost · **What happens:** begin, snap, leap, fir · **To what, where:** good way, fingers, fir

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This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter III. MYTHOLOGICAL, part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Frost), 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:pg22373:39:140
# text = Now, a good way off, Frost had begun cracking, snapping his fingers, and leaping from fir to fir.
1	Now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	10	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl:unmarked	_	_
6	off	off	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
8	Frost	Frost	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
9	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	begun	begin	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
11	cracking	cracking	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
13	snapping	snap	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	10	advcl	_	_
14	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	fingers	finger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
18	leaping	leap	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	13	conj	_	_
19	from	from	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	fir	fir	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	_
21	to	to	PART	TO	_	22	mark	_	_
22	fir	fir	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **begin** | past · perfect | Frost | a good way |  |  | now |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent cracking=Eventuality |
| 2 | **snap** | gerund | Frost *not said here* | Whyever's fingers |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location finger=Theme |
| 3 | **leap** | gerund | Frost *not said here* |  |  | fir |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme from fir=Trajectory |
| 4 | **fir** | to-infinitive | Frost *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | 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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