---
title: But where Fionn would venture his toes his ears would follow. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But where Fionn would venture his toes his ears would follow. Who acts: Fionn, ears. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VII, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter VII, sentence 14

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But where Fionn would venture his toes his ears would follow.

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**Who acts:** Fionn, ears · **What happens:** venture, follow · **To what, where:** toes

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VII. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Fionn, ears), 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:pg2892:20:14
# text = But where Fionn would venture his toes his ears would follow.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	where	where	ADV	WRB	PronType=Rel	5	advmod	_	_
3	Fionn	Fionn	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	venture	venture	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	toes	toe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	_
8	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	ears	ear	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	_
10	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	follow	follow	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **venture** | would | Fionn | Fionn's toes |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent toe=Topic |
| 2 | **follow** | would | Fionn's ears | Fionn's toes *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn chase-51.6 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent toe=Theme |

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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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