---
title: The old man took his hatchet and cut a hole in the floor above the c… — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: The old man took his hatchet and cut a hole in the floor above the cabbage. Who acts: old man. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Ghost Stories., part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Ghost Stories., part 1, sentence 14

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The old man took his hatchet and cut a hole in the floor above the cabbage.

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**Who acts:** old man · **What happens:** take, cut · **To what, where:** hatchet, hole, floor

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This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Ghost Stories., part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old man), 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:pg22373:51:14
# text = The old man took his hatchet and cut a hole in the floor above the cabbage.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	hatchet	hatchet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	cut	cut	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	hole	hole	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	floor	floor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	_
14	above	above	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	cabbage	cabbage	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past | the old man | man's hatchet |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent hatchet=Theme |
| 2 | **cut** | past | the old man *not said here* | a hole |  | the floor above the cabbage |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset hole=Product |

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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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