---
title: You cannot catch a fish by swimming, but you can try, and Fionn tried. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: You cannot catch a fish by swimming, but you can try, and Fionn tried. Who acts: You, Fionn. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IV, 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/pg2892/17/30/)

<!-- 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 IV](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/17/) / 30

# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter IV, sentence 30

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
You cannot catch a fish by swimming, but you can try, and Fionn tried.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** You, Fionn · **What happens:** not catch, swim, try · **To what, where:** fish

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (You, Fionn), 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:pg2892:17:30
# text = You cannot catch a fish by swimming, but you can try, and Fionn tried.
1	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	catch	catch	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	fish	fish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	by	by	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
8	swimming	swim	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
11	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	try	try	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
16	Fionn	Fionn	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	17	nsubj	_	_
17	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **catch** | can | You | a fish |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent fish=Theme |
| 2 | **swim** | gerund | You *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **try** | can | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |
| 4 | **try** | past | Fionn |  |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |

<!-- .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 29](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/17/29/)
- next →: [sentence 31](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/17/31/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter IV](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/17/)