---
title: Then the eldest uncle said to the lad, "Listen, good simpleton! — Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Then the eldest uncle said to the lad, "Listen, good simpleton! Who acts: eldest uncle. A sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Vampire and St Michael, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, The Vampire and St Michael, sentence 56

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Then the eldest uncle said to the lad, "Listen, good simpleton!

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**Who acts:** eldest uncle · **What happens:** say, listen · **To what, where:** lad, good simpleton · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Vampire and St Michael. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (eldest uncle), 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:pg29672:8:56
# text = Then the eldest uncle said to the lad, "Listen, good simpleton!
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	eldest	eld	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	4	amod	_	_
4	uncle	uncle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	lad	lad	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	Listen	listen	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
13	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	simpleton	simpleton	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	5	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 eldest uncle |  | the lad |  | then |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to lad=Recipient |
| 2 | **listen** *in a quote* | infinitive | the eldest uncle *not said here* | good simpleton |  |  |  |  | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=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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