---
title: “May I eat this lion-whelp? — Russian Folk-Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “May I eat this lion-whelp? Who acts: queen bee. A sentence of «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Opening, part 24, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Russian Folk-Tales, Opening, part 24, sentence 43

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“May I eat this lion-whelp?

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**Who acts:** queen bee · **What happens:** eat · **To what, where:** lion whelp

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This is a sentence of «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Opening, part 24. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (queen bee), 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:pg62509:24:43
# text = “May I eat this lion-whelp?
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	May	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	8	det	_	_
6	lion	lion	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	whelp	whelp	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **eat** *in a quote* | may | the queen bee *= bee* | this lion whelp |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent whelp=Patient |

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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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