---
title: “Ah,” said he, “I had a great combat with that fish.” — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Ah,” said he, “I had a great combat with that fish.” Who acts: Fionn. 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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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter X, sentence 74

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“Ah,” said he, “I had a great combat with that fish.”

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**Who acts:** Fionn · **What happens:** say, have · **To what, where:** great combat · **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 (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:pg2892:23:74
# text = “Ah,” said he, “I had a great combat with that fish.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Ah	ah	INTJ	UH	_	5	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	combat	combat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
14	with	with	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	16	det	_	_
16	fish	fish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Fionn |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **have** *in a quote* | past | Fionn | a great combat |  |  |  | with that fish | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent combat=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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