---
title: "Good!" said the serpent, "let him try!" — Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "Good!" said the serpent, "let him try!" Who acts: serpent. A sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Story of the Unlucky Days, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg29672/26/87/)

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# Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, The Story of the Unlucky Days, part 2, sentence 87

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"Good!" said the serpent, "let him try!"

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**Who acts:** serpent · **What happens:** say, let, try · **To what, where:** serpent · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Story of the Unlucky Days, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (serpent), 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:pg29672:26:87
# text = "Good!" said the serpent, "let him try!"
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	serpent	serpent	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	let	let	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	ccomp	_	_
11	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	_
12	try	try	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: express* | past | the serpent |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **let** *in a quote* | infinitive |  | serpent |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **try** *in a quote* | infinitive | serpent *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |

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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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