---
title: "No, brother! don't ask me; it cannot be. — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: "No, brother! don't ask me; it cannot be. Who acts: acquaintance. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Ghost Stories., part 2, 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 2, sentence 124

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"No, brother! don't ask me; it cannot be.

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**Who acts:** acquaintance · **What happens:** not ask, not be · **To what, where:** me · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Ghost Stories., part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (acquaintance), 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:pg22373:52:124
# text = "No, brother! don't ask me; it cannot be.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	No	no	INTJ	UH	Polarity=Neg	8	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
4	brother	brother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	vocative	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
6	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	8	advmod	_	_
8	ask	ask	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
12	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
14	be	be	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **ask** *speech: ask* *in a quote* | present · do-support |  |  | me |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S»: agent=Agent i=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **not** **can** *in a quote* | can | acquaintance |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «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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