---
title: “A dog it is,” growled the glum servant. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “A dog it is,” growled the glum servant. Who acts: amazement, dog. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter III, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter III, sentence 31

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“A dog it is,” growled the glum servant.

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**Who acts:** amazement, dog · **What happens:** be, growl · **To what, where:** dog, glum servant

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter III. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (amazement, dog), 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:pg2892:30:31
# text = “A dog it is,” growled the glum servant.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	is	be	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
8	growled	growl	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	glum	glum	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	servant	servant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** *in a quote* | present | amazement | a dog *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn representation-110.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot dog=Theme |
| 2 | **growl** | past | a dog | the glum servant |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent servant=Topic |

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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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