---
title: But the poor man answered, "Don't ask me, brother. — Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But the poor man answered, "Don't ask me, brother. Who acts: poor man. A sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Story of the Wind, 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/pg29672/3/166/)

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# Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, The Story of the Wind, sentence 166

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But the poor man answered, "Don't ask me, brother.

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**Who acts:** poor man · **What happens:** answer, not ask · **To what, where:** poor man · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (poor 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:pg29672:3:166
# text = But the poor man answered, "Don't ask me, brother.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	Do	do	AUX	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	10	advmod	_	_
10	ask	ask	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	ccomp	_	_
11	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
13	brother	brother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	vocative	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | the poor man |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **ask** *speech: ask* *in a quote* | infinitive · do-support |  |  | the poor man *= man* |  |  | brother *vocative* | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=Recipient |

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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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