---
title: A man who passed by in the morning had spoken to them. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: A man who passed by in the morning had spoken to them. Who acts: man. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter V, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter V, sentence 2

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A man who passed by in the morning had spoken to them.

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** pass, speak · **To what, where:** guardians · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter V. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man), 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:pg2892:18:2
# text = A man who passed by in the morning had spoken to them.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
3	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	4	nsubj	_	_
4	passed	pass	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	acl:relcl	_	_
5	by	by	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	morning	morning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
9	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	spoken	speak	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
11	to	to	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pass** | past | a man |  |  |  | morning |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **speak** *speech: other* | past · perfect | a man |  | guardians *= guardian* |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent to they=Co-Agent |

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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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