---
title: But he held his ground and went on reading, never once looking behin… — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: But he held his ground and went on reading, never once looking behind him. Who acts: fire. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Magic and Witchcraft., part 6, 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 6, sentence 30

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But he held his ground and went on reading, never once looking behind him.

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**Who acts:** fire · **What happens:** hold, go, not look · **To what, where:** ground, reading

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This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Magic and Witchcraft., part 6. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fire), 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:pg22373:47:30
# text = But he held his ground and went on reading, never once looking behind him.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	held	hold	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
8	on	on	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	reading	reading	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
12	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	13	advmod	_	_
13	looking	look	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	3	advcl	_	_
14	behind	behind	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hold** | past | fire | fire's ground |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent ground=Theme |
| 2 | **go** | past | fire *not said here* |  |  | reading |  |  | vn occur-48.3-2 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme on reading=Location |
| 3 | **not** **look** | gerund | fire *not said here* |  |  |  |  | behind fire; once *property* | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent behind he=Theme |

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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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