---
title: The old man had nothing for it but to go to his second son. — Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The old man had nothing for it but to go to his second son. Who acts: old man. A sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Two Princes, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, The Two Princes, part 1, sentence 63

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The old man had nothing for it but to go to his second son.

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**Who acts:** old man · **What happens:** have, go · **To what, where:** nothing

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This is a sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Two Princes, 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 (old man), 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:pg29672:22:63
# text = The old man had nothing for it but to go to his second son.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	4	obj	_	_
6	for	for	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nmod	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	go	go	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
11	to	to	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
13	second	second	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	14	amod	_	_
14	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	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 | **have** | past | the old man | nothing |  |  |  | for mouth | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nothing=Patient |
| 2 | **go** | to-infinitive | the old man *not said here* |  |  |  |  | to man's second son | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to son=Initial\_Location |

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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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