---
title: But Fionn’s eye was the eye of a wild creature that spies on darknes… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But Fionn’s eye was the eye of a wild creature that spies on darkness and moves there wittingly. Who acts: eye, wild creature. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XIV, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/27/8/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Irish Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/) / [Chapter XIV](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/27/) / 8

# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter XIV, sentence 8

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But Fionn’s eye was the eye of a wild creature that spies on darkness and moves there wittingly.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** eye, wild creature · **What happens:** be, spy, move · **To what, where:** eye, darkness

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter XIV. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (eye, wild creature), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg2892:27:8
# text = But Fionn’s eye was the eye of a wild creature that spies on darkness and moves there wittingly.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
2	Fionn	Fionn	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	’s	's	PART	POS	_	2	case	_	_
4	eye	eye	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
5	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	eye	eye	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	wild	wild	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	creature	creature	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	_
12	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	13	nsubj	_	_
13	spies	spy	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	acl:relcl	_	_
14	on	on	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	darkness	darkness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	moves	move	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	conj	_	_
18	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	17	advmod	_	_
19	wittingly	wittingly	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | Fionn's eye | the eye |  |  |  | of a wild creature | tree rules |
| 2 | **spy** | present | a wild creature |  |  | darkness |  |  | vn sight-30.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer |
| 3 | **move** | present | a wild creature *not said here* |  |  | there |  | wittingly *property* | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/27/7/)
- next →: [sentence 9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/27/9/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter XIV](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/27/)