---
title: Boys must know what another boy can do, and they will match themselv… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Boys must know what another boy can do, and they will match themselves against everything. Who acts: Boys, boy. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VIII, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/21/11/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter VIII, sentence 11

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Boys must know what another boy can do, and they will match themselves against everything.

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**Who acts:** Boys, boy · **What happens:** know, do, match · **To what, where:** Boys · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VIII. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Boys, boy), 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:pg2892:21:11
# text = Boys must know what another boy can do, and they will match themselves against everything.
1	Boys	boy	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
2	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	8	obj	_	_
5	another	another	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	6	det	_	_
6	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
7	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	match	match	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
14	themselves	themselves	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	13	obj	_	_
15	against	against	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	everything	everything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Tot	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **know** | must | Boys |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **do** | can | another boy |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |
| 3 | **match** | future | Boys *= boy* | Boys *= boy* |  |  |  | against everything | vn amalgamate-22.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent themselves=Patient |

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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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