---
title: “I was in air, and it was as though I were in fire. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “I was in air, and it was as though I were in fire. Who acts: man, air. 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 9

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“I was in air, and it was as though I were in fire.

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**Who acts:** man, air · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** air, fire

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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 (man, air), 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:pg2892:12:9
# text = “I was in air, and it was as though I were in fire.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	in	in	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	air	air	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
10	as	as	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
11	though	though	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
12	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
13	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
14	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	fire	fire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** *in a quote* | past | man |  |  | air and fire |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** *in a quote* | past | air |  |  | fire |  |  | tree rules |

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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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