---
title: Tell me, in God's name, why such things be? — Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Tell me, in God's name, why such things be? Who acts: you, such things, God. 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 22

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Tell me, in God's name, why such things be?

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**Who acts:** you, such things, God · **What happens:** tell, be, name · **To what, where:** me, name · **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 (you, such things, God), 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:pg29672:3:22
# text = Tell me, in God's name, why such things be?
1	Tell	tell	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	1	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
4	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	God	God	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	's	's	PART	POS	_	5	case	_	_
7	name	name	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
9	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	12	advmod	_	_
10	such	such	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nsubj	_	_
12	be	be	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	1	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | imperative | you *not said here* |  | me | God's name |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=Recipient |
| 2 | **be** | infinitive | such things |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **name** |  | God |  |  |  |  |  | nom name «communication transitive»: poss=agent |

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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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