---
title: He learned to jump by chasing hares in a bumpy field. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He learned to jump by chasing hares in a bumpy field. Who acts: Fionn. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IV, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter IV, sentence 10

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He learned to jump by chasing hares in a bumpy field.

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**Who acts:** Fionn · **What happens:** learn, jump, chase · **To what, where:** hares, bumpy field

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IV. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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:pg2892:17:10
# text = He learned to jump by chasing hares in a bumpy field.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	learned	learn	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	jump	jump	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	by	by	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
6	chasing	chase	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
7	hares	hare	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obj	_	_
8	in	in	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	bumpy	bumpy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	field	field	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **learn** | past | Fionn |  |  |  |  |  | vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **jump** | to-infinitive | Fionn *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **chase** | gerund | Fionn *not said here* | hares |  | a bumpy field |  |  | vn chase-51.6 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent hare=Theme in field=Trajectory |

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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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