---
title: "Surely we can never go on living all our lives without a soul [to s… — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: "Surely we can never go on living all our lives without a soul [to speak to]. Who acts: we. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Magic and Witchcraft., part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Magic and Witchcraft., part 3, sentence 18

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"Surely we can never go on living all our lives without a soul \[to speak to\].

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**Who acts:** we · **What happens:** not go, live, speak · **To what, where:** lives · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Magic and Witchcraft., part 3. 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:pg22373:44:18
# text = "Surely we can never go on living all our lives without a soul [to speak to].
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Surely	surely	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
3	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
4	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
5	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
6	go	go	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	on	on	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
8	living	live	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	advcl	_	_
9	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	11	det:predet	_	_
10	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	lives	life	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	_
12	without	without	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	soul	soul	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
15	[	[	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	17	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
17	speak	speak	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	6	parataxis	_	_
18	to	to	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	]	]	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	17	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **go** *in a quote* | can | we |  |  |  |  | surely *property* | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **live** *in a quote* | gerund | we *not said here* | our lives |  |  |  | without a soul | vn lodge-46 «NP V ADV»: agent=Theme life=Location |
| 3 | **speak** *speech: other* *in a quote* | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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