---
title: "Turn your back to the lake and walk backwards," said the old man. — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: "Turn your back to the lake and walk backwards," said the old man. Who acts: old man. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter VI. LEGENDS, part 5, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/60/161/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collecti…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/) / [Chapter VI. LEGENDS, part 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/60/) / 161

# Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Chapter VI. LEGENDS, part 5, sentence 161

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Turn your back to the lake and walk backwards," said the old man.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** old man · **What happens:** turn, walk, say · **To what, where:** back, lake · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter VI. LEGENDS, part 5. 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), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg22373:60:161
# text = "Turn your back to the lake and walk backwards," said the old man.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Turn	turn	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	ccomp	_	_
3	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	back	back	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	lake	lake	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	walk	walk	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
10	backwards	backwards	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **turn** *in a quote* | infinitive |  | your back |  | the lake |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V NP PP.trajectory»: agent=Agent back=Theme to lake=Trajectory |
| 2 | **walk** *in a quote* | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | backwards *property* | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the old man |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 160](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/60/160/)
- next →: [sentence 162](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/60/162/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter VI. LEGENDS, part 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/60/)