---
title: He held it gingerly for a few moments. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He held it gingerly for a few moments. Who acts: Fergus. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IV. On the following day Fergus called his servant, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter IV. On the following day Fergus called his servant, sentence 23

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He held it gingerly for a few moments.

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**Who acts:** Fergus · **What happens:** hold · **To what, where:** much

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IV. On the following day Fergus called his servant. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Fergus), 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:pg2892:31:23
# text = He held it gingerly for a few moments.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	held	hold	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	gingerly	gingerly	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
5	for	for	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	few	few	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	moments	moment	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hold** | past | Fergus | much |  |  | moment | gingerly *property* | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |

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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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