---
title: He began to pull and tug at them, but they didn't get up. — Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He began to pull and tug at them, but they didn't get up. Who acts: brother, oxen. 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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# Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, The Story of the Wind, sentence 188

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He began to pull and tug at them, but they didn't get up.

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**Who acts:** brother, oxen · **What happens:** begin, pull, tug, not get up

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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 (brother, oxen), 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:pg29672:3:188
# text = He began to pull and tug at them, but they didn't get up.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	pull	pull	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	tug	tug	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
7	at	at	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
12	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
14	get	get	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	parataxis	_	_
15	up	up	ADP	RP	_	14	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **begin** | past | brother |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **pull** | to-infinitive | brother *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn slide-11.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **tug** | infinitive | brother *not said here* |  |  |  |  | at oxen *= ox* | vn push-12-1 «NP V PP-Conative»: agent=Agent at they=Theme |
| 4 | **not** **get up** | past · do-support | oxen *= ox* |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S\_ING»: 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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