---
title: They took to licking their lips, and scratching their heads, and won… — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: They took to licking their lips, and scratching their heads, and wondering to whose share so great an honor would fall. Who acts: grandfathers, honor. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Magic and Witchcraft., part 4, with its dependency tree and the prag
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/45/35/)

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# Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Magic and Witchcraft., part 4, sentence 35

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
They took to licking their lips, and scratching their heads, and wondering to whose share so great an honor would fall.

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**Who acts:** grandfathers, honor · **What happens:** take, lick, scratch, wonder, fall · **To what, where:** lips, heads

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This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Magic and Witchcraft., 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 (grandfathers, honor), 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:pg22373:45:35
# text = They took to licking their lips, and scratching their heads, and wondering to whose share so great an honor would fall.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	licking	lick	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	advcl	_	_
5	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	lips	lip	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	scratching	scratch	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	advcl	_	_
10	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	heads	head	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
14	wondering	wonder	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	19	csubj	_	_
15	to	to	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	whose	whose	PRON	WP$	Poss=Yes|PronType=Rel	17	nmod:poss	_	_
17	share	share	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	_
18	so	so	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
19	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	parataxis	_	_
20	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	honor	honor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	nsubj	_	_
22	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	23	aux	_	_
23	fall	fall	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	19	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past | grandfathers *= grandfather* |  |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **lick** | gerund | grandfathers *= grandfather* *not said here* | grandfathers's lips |  |  |  |  | vn wipe\_manner-10.4.1-1 «NP V NP.source»: agent=Agent lip=Source |
| 3 | **scratch** | gerund | grandfathers *= grandfather* *not said here* | grandfathers's heads |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent head=Theme |
| 4 | **wonder** *speech: ask* | gerund |  |  |  |  |  | to share | vn care-88.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 5 | **fall** | would | a honor |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3 «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.

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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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