---
title: He could run a deer down and haul it home by the reluctant skull. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He could run a deer down and haul it home by the reluctant skull. Who acts: Fionn. 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 26

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He could run a deer down and haul it home by the reluctant skull.

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**Who acts:** Fionn · **What happens:** run down, haul · **To what, where:** deer

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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), 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:pg2892:20:26
# text = He could run a deer down and haul it home by the reluctant skull.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	run	run	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	deer	deer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	down	down	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	haul	haul	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	_
10	home	home	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
11	by	by	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	reluctant	reluctant	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	skull	skull	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **run down** | could | Fionn | a deer |  |  |  | down *property* | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme deer=Trajectory |
| 2 | **haul** | infinitive | Fionn *not said here* | deer |  |  |  | by the reluctant skull; home *property* | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=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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