---
title: Ah, that was a happy man when he saw me! — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Ah, that was a happy man when he saw me! Who acts: that, man. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XI, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XI, sentence 2

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Ah, that was a happy man when he saw me!

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**Who acts:** that, man · **What happens:** be, see · **To what, where:** happy man, me

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XI. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (that, man), 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:pg2892:12:2
# text = Ah, that was a happy man when he saw me!
1	Ah	ah	INTJ	UH	_	7	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
3	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	happy	happy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
8	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	10	advmod	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	acl:relcl	_	_
11	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | that | a happy man |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **see** | past | man | me |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer i=Stimulus |

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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:** «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Project Gutenberg book 2892 (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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- ← previous: [sentence 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/12/1/)
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- ↑ back to [Chapter XI](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/12/)