---
title: So Sorrow sat fast on the wretched merchant’s shoulders. — Russian Folk-Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: So Sorrow sat fast on the wretched merchant’s shoulders. Who acts: Sorrow. A sentence of «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Opening, part 36, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Russian Folk-Tales, Opening, part 36, sentence 75

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So Sorrow sat fast on the wretched merchant’s shoulders.

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**Who acts:** Sorrow · **What happens:** sit · **To what, where:** shoulders

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This is a sentence of «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Opening, part 36. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Sorrow), 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:pg62509:36:75
# text = So Sorrow sat fast on the wretched merchant’s shoulders.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	Sorrow	Sorrow	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	fast	fast	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	3	advmod	_	_
5	on	on	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	wretched	wretched	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	merchant	merchant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’s	's	PART	POS	_	8	case	_	_
10	shoulders	shoulder	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit** | past | Sorrow |  |  | the wretched merchant's shoulders |  | fast *property* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on shoulder=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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