---
title: Ay, Sir; they died of over-work. — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Ay, Sir; they died of over-work. Who acts: horses. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 16, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 16, sentence 25

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Ay, Sir; they died of over-work.

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**Who acts:** horses · **What happens:** die · **To what, where:** Sir

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This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 16. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (horses), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg14241:30:25
# text = Ay, Sir; they died of over-work.
1	Ay	ay	INTJ	UH	_	3	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
3	Sir	Sir	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	6	punct	_	_
5	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	died	die	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	over-work	over-work	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **die** | past | horses *= horse* | Sir |  |  |  | of over-work | vn die-42.4-1 «NP V PP.cause»: agent=Patient of over-work=Causer |

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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:** «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 14241 (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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