---
title: At last he tried to speak, but choked, and fled in terror. — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: At last he tried to speak, but choked, and fled in terror. Who acts: Devil. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter VI. LEGENDS, 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, Chapter VI. LEGENDS, part 1, sentence 65

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At last he tried to speak, but choked, and fled in terror.

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**Who acts:** Devil · **What happens:** try, speak, choke, flee · **To what, where:** last, terror · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter VI. LEGENDS, 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 (Devil), 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:pg22373:56:65
# text = At last he tried to speak, but choked, and fled in terror.
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	last	last	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
3	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	speak	speak	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	choked	choke	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	fled	flee	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	conj	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	terror	terror	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **try** | past | Devil |  |  | last |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **speak** *speech: other* *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | Devil *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **choke** | past | Devil *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn die-42.4-1 «NP V»: agent=Patient |
| 4 | **flee** | past | Devil *not said here* |  |  | terror |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1-1 «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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