---
title: “When the king’s wife saw me she desired me. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “When the king’s wife saw me she desired me. Who acts: wife. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/12/21/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XI, sentence 21

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“When the king’s wife saw me she desired me.

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**Who acts:** wife · **What happens:** see, desire · **To what, where:** brown flood

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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 (wife), 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:pg2892:12:21
# text = “When the king’s wife saw me she desired me.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	When	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	7	advmod	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	’s	's	PART	POS	_	4	case	_	_
6	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	advcl	_	_
8	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	_
9	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	desired	desire	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **see** *in a quote* | past | the king's wife | the brown flood *= flood* |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer i=Stimulus |
| 2 | **desire** *in a quote* | past | wife | the brown flood *= flood* |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot i=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:** «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 20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/12/20/)
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- ↑ back to [Chapter XI](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/12/)