---
title: A small boy might shiver as he stared into that wink and blink and t… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: A small boy might shiver as he stared into that wink and blink and twink of brown pebbles and murder. Who acts: small boy, boy. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/17/18/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter IV, sentence 18

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A small boy might shiver as he stared into that wink and blink and twink of brown pebbles and murder.

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**Who acts:** small boy, boy · **What happens:** shiver, stare, blink, twink

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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 (small boy, boy), 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:pg2892:17:18
# text = A small boy might shiver as he stared into that wink and blink and twink of brown pebbles and murder.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	small	small	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	might	might	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	shiver	shiver	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	stared	stare	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	_
9	into	into	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	11	det	_	_
11	wink	wink	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	blink	blink	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	twink	twink	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	conj	_	_
16	of	of	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	brown	brown	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	pebbles	pebble	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obl	_	_
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
20	murder	murder	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **shiver** | might | a small boy |  |  |  |  |  | vn body\_internal\_states-40.6 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **stare** | past | boy |  |  |  |  | into that wink | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent into wink=Theme |
| 3 | **blink** | infinitive | a small boy *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn hiccup-40.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **twink** | infinitive | a small boy *not said here* |  |  |  |  | of brown pebbles and murder | 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:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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