---
title: Now, old man, tell me a story.” — Russian Folk-Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Now, old man, tell me a story.” Who acts: old man. A sentence of «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Opening, part 18, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Russian Folk-Tales, Opening, part 18, sentence 102

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Now, old man, tell me a story.”

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**Who acts:** old man · **What happens:** tell · **To what, where:** story, me · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Opening, part 18. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old man), 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:pg62509:18:102
# text = Now, old man, tell me a story.”
1	Now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
3	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
6	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	iobj	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	story	story	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | infinitive | old man | a story | me |  | now |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent i=Recipient story=Topic |

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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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