---
title: The wife scudded about as nimbly as a fly, and spread a cloth out on… — Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The wife scudded about as nimbly as a fly, and spread a cloth out on the floor without a word. Who acts: wife. A sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Story of the Wind, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg29672/3/144/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg29672/) / [The Story of the Wind](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg29672/3/) / 144

# Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, The Story of the Wind, sentence 144

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The wife scudded about as nimbly as a fly, and spread a cloth out on the floor without a word.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** wife · **What happens:** scud, spread out · **To what, where:** cloth, floor

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Story of the Wind. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wife), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg29672:3:144
# text = The wife scudded about as nimbly as a fly, and spread a cloth out on the floor without a word.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	scudded	scud	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	about	about	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
5	as	as	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	nimbly	nimbly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	xcomp	_	_
7	as	as	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	fly	fly	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	spread	spread	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	cloth	cloth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	_
15	out	out	ADP	RP	_	12	compound:prt	_	_
16	on	on	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	floor	floor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	_
19	without	without	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **scud** | past | the wife |  |  |  |  | nimbly *property* | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **spread out** | past | the wife *not said here* | a cloth |  | the floor |  | without a word | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent cloth=Theme on floor=Destination |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 143](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg29672/3/143/)
- next →: [sentence 145](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg29672/3/145/)
- ↑ back to [The Story of the Wind](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg29672/3/)