---
title: There were no bottles, no mere pints—entire rivers flowed! — Russian Folk-Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: There were no bottles, no mere pints—entire rivers flowed! Who acts: bottles, entire rivers. A sentence of «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Opening, part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Russian Folk-Tales, Opening, part 4, sentence 124

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There were no bottles, no mere pints—entire rivers flowed!

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**Who acts:** bottles, entire rivers · **What happens:** be, flow · **To what, where:** mere pints

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This is a sentence of «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Opening, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (bottles, entire rivers), 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:pg62509:4:124
# text = There were no bottles, no mere pints—entire rivers flowed!
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	were	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	4	det	_	_
4	bottles	bottle	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
6	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	8	det	_	_
7	mere	mere	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	pints	pint	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	—	-	PUNCT	:	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	entire	entire	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	rivers	river	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nsubj	_	_
12	flowed	flow	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | no bottles and no mere pints |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **flow** | past | entire rivers | no mere pints *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location pint=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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