---
title: He had birds for playmates, but all the creatures that live in a woo… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He had birds for playmates, but all the creatures that live in a wood must have been his comrades. Who acts: life, creatures. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter I, sentence 20

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He had birds for playmates, but all the creatures that live in a wood must have been his comrades.

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**Who acts:** life, creatures · **What happens:** have, live, be · **To what, where:** birds, wood, comrades

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (life, creatures), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg2892:277`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg2892:14:20
# text = He had birds for playmates, but all the creatures that live in a wood must have been his comrades.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
4	for	for	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	playmates	playmate	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	_
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	10	det:predet	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	creatures	creature	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	nsubj	_	_
11	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	12	nsubj	_	_
12	live	live	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	acl:relcl	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	wood	wood	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	_
16	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
17	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	20	aux	_	_
18	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	20	cop	_	_
19	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	20	nmod:poss	_	_
20	comrades	comrade	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	conj	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | life | birds |  |  |  | for playmates | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bird=Patient |
| 2 | **live** | present | all creatures |  |  | a wood |  |  | vn lodge-46 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in wood=Location |
| 3 | **is a** | must · perfect | all creatures | life's comrades |  |  |  |  | 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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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