---
title: “Well, still, a Russian soldier cannot drown in water, or burn in fi… — Russian Folk-Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Well, still, a Russian soldier cannot drown in water, or burn in fire. Who acts: Russian soldier. A sentence of «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Opening, part 12, 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/pg62509/12/151/)

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# Russian Folk-Tales, Opening, part 12, sentence 151

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“Well, still, a Russian soldier cannot drown in water, or burn in fire.

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**Who acts:** Russian soldier · **What happens:** not drown, burn · **To what, where:** water, fire

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This is a sentence of «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Opening, part 12. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Russian soldier), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg62509:12:151
# text = “Well, still, a Russian soldier cannot drown in water, or burn in fire.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Well	well	INTJ	UH	_	11	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	still	still	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	Russian	Russian	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	soldier	soldier	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
9	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
11	drown	drown	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
15	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
16	burn	burn	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	11	parataxis	_	_
17	in	in	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	fire	fire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **drown** *in a quote* | can | a Russian soldier |  |  | water | still |  | vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **burn** *in a quote* | infinitive |  |  |  | fire |  |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in fire=Location |

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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:** «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Project Gutenberg book 62509 (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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