---
title: He was told of a powerful gentleman who observed neither Saint’s day… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He was told of a powerful gentleman who observed neither Saint’s day nor Sunday. Who acts: powerful gentleman. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I, 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/pg2892/2/3/)

<!-- 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 I](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/2/) / 3

# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter I, sentence 3

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He was told of a powerful gentleman who observed neither Saint’s day nor Sunday.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** powerful gentleman · **What happens:** tell, observe · **To what, where:** News · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (powerful gentleman), 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:pg2892:2:3
# text = He was told of a powerful gentleman who observed neither Saint’s day nor Sunday.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux:pass	_	_
3	told	tell	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	powerful	powerful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	gentleman	gentleman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl:agent	_	_
8	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	9	nsubj	_	_
9	observed	observe	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	acl:relcl	_	_
10	neither	neither	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	11	det	_	_
11	Saint	Saint	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	’s	's	PART	POS	_	11	case	_	_
13	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
14	nor	nor	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	15	cc	_	_
15	Sunday	Sunday	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past · passive | a powerful gentleman | News |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent subject=Recipient |
| 2 | **observe** | past | a powerful gentleman |  |  |  | day |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=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 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/2/2/)
- next →: [sentence 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/2/4/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter I](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/2/)