---
title: There was a certain town, the road to which was a very roundabout one. — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: There was a certain town, the road to which was a very roundabout one. Who acts: certain town, road. 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 78

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There was a certain town, the road to which was a very roundabout one.

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**Who acts:** certain town, road · **What happens:** be

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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 (certain town, road), 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:pg22373:52:78
# text = There was a certain town, the road to which was a very roundabout one.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	certain	certain	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	town	town	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	road	road	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	appos	_	_
9	to	to	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
10	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	14	nsubj	_	_
11	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	very	very	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
14	roundabout	roundabout	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	_
15	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	14	flat	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a certain town |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **is** | past | the road |  |  |  |  | to a roundabout | tree rules |

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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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