---
title: It may be that his mother was watching the match and that he could n… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: It may be that his mother was watching the match and that he could not but exhibit his skill before her. Who acts: chief, Fionn. 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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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter VIII, sentence 49

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It may be that his mother was watching the match and that he could not but exhibit his skill before her.

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**Who acts:** chief, Fionn · **What happens:** be, not exhibit · **To what, where:** skill

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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 (chief, Fionn), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg2892:525`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg2892:21:49
# text = It may be that his mother was watching the match and that he could not but exhibit his skill before her.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj:outer	_	_
2	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
3	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	cop	_	_
4	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
5	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
7	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	watching	watch	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	match	match	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
12	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
13	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
14	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
15	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	17	advmod	_	_
16	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	exhibit	exhibit	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	conj	_	_
18	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	19	nmod:poss	_	_
19	skill	skill	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	_
20	before	before	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
21	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	obl	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | may · progressive | chief |  |  |  |  | watch *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **exhibit** | could | Fionn | Fionn's skill |  |  | before occasion |  | vn reflexive\_appearance-48.1.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent skill=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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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