---
title: “It must not become a greater one,” the poet replied sternly. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “It must not become a greater one,” the poet replied sternly. Who acts: omission. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter X, 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/pg2892/23/66/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter X, sentence 66

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“It must not become a greater one,” the poet replied sternly.

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**Who acts:** omission · **What happens:** not become, reply · **To what, where:** greater one, poet · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter X. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (omission), 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:pg2892:23:66
# text = “It must not become a greater one,” the poet replied sternly.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	become	become	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	greater	great	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	8	amod	_	_
8	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	poet	poet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	xcomp	_	_
13	replied	reply	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	12	acl	_	_
14	sternly	sternly	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **become** *in a quote* | must | omission | a greater one |  |  |  |  | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient |
| 2 | **reply** *speech: assert* | participle |  | the poet *not said here* |  |  |  | sternly *property* | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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