---
title: He was a king, a seer and a poet. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He was a king, a seer and a poet. Who acts: He. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, The Boyhood of Fionn, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, The Boyhood of Fionn, sentence 1

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He was a king, a seer and a poet.

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**Who acts:** He · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** king

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, The Boyhood of Fionn. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (He), 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:pg2892:13:1
# text = He was a king, a seer and a poet.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	seer	seer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	poet	poet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | He | a king and a seer and a poet |  |  |  |  | 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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