---
title: There lived an old man and an old woman; the old man was rolling a p… — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: There lived an old man and an old woman; the old man was rolling a pea about, and it fell on the ground. Who acts: old man, pea. 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 81

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There lived an old man and an old woman; the old man was rolling a pea about, and it fell on the ground.

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**Who acts:** old man, pea · **What happens:** live, roll, fall · **To what, where:** old man, pea, ground

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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, pea), 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:pg22373:51:81
# text = There lived an old man and an old woman; the old man was rolling a pea about, and it fell on the ground.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	lived	live	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
7	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	15	punct	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
14	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	rolling	roll	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	advcl	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	pea	pea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obj	_	_
18	about	about	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
21	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	22	nsubj	_	_
22	fell	fall	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
23	on	on	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
24	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	25	det	_	_
25	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **live** | past |  | a old man and a old woman |  | there |  |  | vn lodge-46 «NP V ADV»: agent=Theme man=Location |
| 2 | **roll** | past · progressive | the old man | a pea |  |  |  | about *property* | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent pea=Agent |
| 3 | **fall** | past | pea |  |  | the ground |  |  | vn occur-48.3 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme on ground=Location |

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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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