---
title: So the soldier began to tell her. — Russian Folk-Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: So the soldier began to tell her. Who acts: soldier. A sentence of «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Opening, part 25, 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/pg62509/25/17/)

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# Russian Folk-Tales, Opening, part 25, sentence 17

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So the soldier began to tell her.

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**Who acts:** soldier · **What happens:** begin, tell · **To what, where:** Tsarévna · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Opening, part 25. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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:pg62509:25:17
# text = So the soldier began to tell her.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	soldier	soldier	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
7	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **begin** | past | the soldier |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive | the soldier *not said here* |  | Tsarévna |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent she=Recipient |

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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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