---
title: Tell her: ‘Please, dear Mother, scratch my head.’ — Russian Folk-Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Tell her: ‘Please, dear Mother, scratch my head.’ Who acts: you. A sentence of «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Opening, part 17, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Russian Folk-Tales, Opening, part 17, sentence 56

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Tell her: ‘Please, dear Mother, scratch my head.’

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** tell, scratch · **To what, where:** dear Mother, beaver, head · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Opening, part 17. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), 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:pg62509:17:56
# text = Tell her: ‘Please, dear Mother, scratch my head.’
1	Tell	tell	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	1	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	1	punct	_	_
4	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	Please	please	INTJ	UH	_	1	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	dear	dear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	Mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
10	scratch	scratch	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	1	conj	_	_
11	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	’	'	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* | dear Mother | beaver |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent she=Recipient |
| 2 | **scratch** | infinitive | you *not said here* | my head |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent head=Theme |

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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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