---
title: "What sort of a fool is this!" they say. " — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: "What sort of a fool is this!" they say. " Who acts: sisters. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Magic and Witchcraft., part 5, 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 5, sentence 26

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"What sort of a fool is this!" they say. "

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**Who acts:** sisters · **What happens:** be, say, sort · **To what, where:** this, sort, fool · **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 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sisters), 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:pg22373:46:26
# text = "What sort of a fool is this!" they say. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	3	det	_	_
3	sort	sort	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	fool	fool	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
7	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
8	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	say	say	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
14	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | present |  | this |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: express* | present | sisters *= sister* | what sort of a fool *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent sort=Topic |
| 3 | **sort** *in a quote* |  |  | a fool |  |  |  |  | nom sort «cognition transitive»: of=patient |

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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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