---
title: A clerk cannot be fashioned out of an old man on the point of death!" — Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: A clerk cannot be fashioned out of an old man on the point of death!" Who acts: clerk. 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 91

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A clerk cannot be fashioned out of an old man on the point of death!"

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**Who acts:** clerk · **What happens:** not be, point · **To what, where:** death

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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 (clerk), 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:pg29672:22:91
# text = A clerk cannot be fashioned out of an old man on the point of death!"
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	clerk	clerk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
5	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	cop	_	_
6	fashioned	fashioned	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
7	out	out	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
9	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
12	on	on	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	point	point	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	death	death	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is** | can | a clerk |  |  |  |  | out a old man on the point of death; fashioned *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **point** |  |  | death |  |  |  |  | nom point «cognition transitive»: of=patient |

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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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