---
title: “How does this salmon get wisdom into his flesh?” — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “How does this salmon get wisdom into his flesh?” A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IX, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter IX, sentence 47

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“How does this salmon get wisdom into his flesh?”

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**What happens:** do, get · **To what, where:** salmon, wisdom, flesh

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IX. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg2892:22:47
# text = “How does this salmon get wisdom into his flesh?”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
3	does	do	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	advcl	_	_
4	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	5	det	_	_
5	salmon	salmon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	get	get	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	wisdom	wisdom	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
8	into	into	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	flesh	flesh	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** *in a quote* | present |  | this salmon |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent salmon=Eventuality |
| 2 | **get** *in a quote* | present |  | wisdom |  | Fionn's flesh |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer wisdom=Stimulus |

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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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- ← previous: [sentence 46](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/22/46/)
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