---
title: With what a dilation of spirit the ladies would have told tales of h… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: With what a dilation of spirit the ladies would have told tales of him, Fionn’s father. Who acts: Baiscne. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter III, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/16/13/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Irish Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/) / [Chapter III](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/16/) / 13

# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter III, sentence 13

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
With what a dilation of spirit the ladies would have told tales of him, Fionn’s father.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Baiscne · **What happens:** tell, dilate · **To what, where:** ladies, spirit · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg2892:16:13
# text = With what a dilation of spirit the ladies would have told tales of him, Fionn’s father.
1	With	with	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	what	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	4	det:predet	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	dilation	dilation	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	spirit	spirit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	ladies	lady	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj:pass	_	_
9	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
10	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	aux	_	_
11	told	tell	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
12	tales	tale	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obj	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
16	Fionn	Fionn	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	18	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’s	's	PART	POS	_	16	case	_	_
18	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | would · perfect · passive |  | the ladies |  |  |  | with what dilation of spirit | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: subject=Recipient tale=Topic |
| 2 | **dilate** |  |  | spirit |  |  |  |  | nom dilation «communication transitive»: of=patient |
| 3 | **tell** |  | Baiscne |  |  |  |  |  | nom tale «communication intransitive»: of=agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/16/12/)
- next →: [sentence 14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/16/14/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter III](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/16/)