---
title: Midnight came, the wind blew, the coffin began to rock, the cover fl… — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: Midnight came, the wind blew, the coffin began to rock, the cover flew afar off. Who acts: Midnight, wind, coffin, cover. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Magic and Witchcraft., part 7, 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 7, sentence 2

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Midnight came, the wind blew, the coffin began to rock, the cover flew afar off.

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**Who acts:** Midnight, wind, coffin, cover · **What happens:** come, blow, begin, fly · **To what, where:** rock

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This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Magic and Witchcraft., part 7. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Midnight, wind, coffin, cover), 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:pg22373:48:2
# text = Midnight came, the wind blew, the coffin began to rock, the cover flew afar off.
1	Midnight	midnight	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	wind	wind	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	blew	blow	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	coffin	coffin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	rock	rock	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	cover	cover	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
16	flew	fly	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	conj	_	_
17	afar	afar	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	xcomp	_	_
18	off	off	ADP	RP	_	17	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past | Midnight |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **blow** | past | the wind |  |  |  |  |  | vn split-23.2 «NP V apart»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **begin** | past | the coffin | rock |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent rock=Eventuality |
| 4 | **fly** | past | the cover |  |  |  |  | afar *property* | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=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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