---
title: "A bad piece of work, my son!" said the old woman. " — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: "A bad piece of work, my son!" said the old woman. " Who acts: bad piece. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Ghost Stories., part 3, 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 3, sentence 150

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"A bad piece of work, my son!" said the old woman. "

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**Who acts:** bad piece · **What happens:** say · **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 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (bad piece), 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:pg22373:53:150
# text = "A bad piece of work, my son!" said the old woman. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	bad	bad	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	piece	piece	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	work	work	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
17	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | a bad piece of work and my son |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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