---
title: And as for nettles, if they hit him he hit back. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: And as for nettles, if they hit him he hit back. Who acts: nettles, Fionn. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter II, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter II, sentence 7

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And as for nettles, if they hit him he hit back.

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**Who acts:** nettles, Fionn · **What happens:** hit, hit back · **To what, where:** Fionn

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter II. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (nettles, Fionn), 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:pg2892:15:7
# text = And as for nettles, if they hit him he hit back.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
2	as	as	ADP	IN	ExtPos=ADP	4	case	_	_
3	for	for	ADP	IN	_	2	fixed	_	_
4	nettles	nettle	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
6	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
7	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	hit	hit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	hit	hit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	_
12	back	back	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hit** | past | nettles *= nettle* | Fionn |  |  |  | as nettles | tree rules |
| 2 | **hit back** | past | Fionn |  |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8-1 «NP V»: agent=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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