---
title: I know what I am about."--What was the poor man to do? — Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: I know what I am about."--What was the poor man to do? Who acts: I. A sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Straw Ox, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, The Straw Ox, sentence 6

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I know what I am about."--What was the poor man to do?

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** know, be, do · **To what, where:** poor man · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Straw Ox. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg29672:14:6
# text = I know what I am about."--What was the poor man to do?
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	know	know	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	6	obl	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
6	about	about	ADV	RB	_	2	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	14	nsubj	_	_
11	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	conj	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **know** | present | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **is** | present | I |  |  |  |  | about *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **is a** *in a quote* | past |  | the poor man |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **do** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | I *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: 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:** «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», Project Gutenberg book 29672 (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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