---
title: How was the old man to get a look at the head of the cabbage? — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: How was the old man to get a look at the head of 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/51/18/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collecti…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/) / [Ghost Stories., part 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/51/) / 18

# Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Ghost Stories., part 1, sentence 18

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
How was the old man to get a look at the head of the cabbage?

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** old man · **What happens:** be, get · **To what, where:** look, head

<!-- .vabout -->
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.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg22373:51:18
# text = How was the old man to get a look at the head of the cabbage?
1	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	0	root	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	1	cop	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	nsubj	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	get	get	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	acl	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	look	look	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
10	at	at	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	cabbage	cabbage	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the old man |  |  |  |  | how *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **get** | to-infinitive | the old man *not said here* | a look |  | the head of the cabbage |  |  | vn get-13.5.1-1 «NP V NP PP.source NP.asset»: agent=Agent look=Theme at head=Asset |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/51/17/)
- next →: [sentence 19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/51/19/)
- ↑ back to [Ghost Stories., part 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/51/)