---
title: There was nothing in wells or nettles, only women dreaded them. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: There was nothing in wells or nettles, only women dreaded them. Who acts: nothing, women. 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 9

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There was nothing in wells or nettles, only women dreaded them.

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**Who acts:** nothing, women · **What happens:** be, dread · **To what, where:** nettles

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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 (nothing, women), 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:pg2892:15:9
# text = There was nothing in wells or nettles, only women dreaded them.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	2	nsubj	_	_
4	in	in	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	wells	well	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nmod	_	_
6	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	nettles	nettle	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	only	only	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
10	women	woman	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	_
11	dreaded	dread	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
12	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | nothing |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **dread** | past | women | nettles *= nettle* |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer they=Stimulus |

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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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