---
title: Then the father took the flute and tried his hand at it, and it sang: — Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Then the father took the flute and tried his hand at it, and it sang: Who acts: father, flute. A sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Three Brothers, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, The Three Brothers, sentence 28

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Then the father took the flute and tried his hand at it, and it sang:

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**Who acts:** father, flute · **What happens:** take, try, sing · **To what, where:** flute, hand

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This is a sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Three Brothers. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (father, flute), 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:pg29672:18:28
# text = Then the father took the flute and tried his hand at it, and it sang:
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	flute	flute	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
9	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	hand	hand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	at	at	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
15	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
16	sang	sing	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	16	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past | the father | the flute |  |  | then |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent flute=Theme |
| 2 | **try** | past | the father *not said here* | father's hand |  | flute |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent hand=Eventuality |
| 3 | **sing** *speech: express* | past | flute |  |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .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.

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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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