---
title: But on this chase whatever signs the dogs gave were not understood b… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But on this chase whatever signs the dogs gave were not understood by their master. Who acts: dogs, master. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter I, sentence 9

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But on this chase whatever signs the dogs gave were not understood by their master.

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**Who acts:** dogs, master · **What happens:** give, not understand · **To what, where:** signs, chase

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

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg2892:949`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg2892:33:9
# text = But on this chase whatever signs the dogs gave were not understood by their master.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
2	on	on	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	4	det	_	_
4	chase	chase	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	_
5	whatever	whatever	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	6	det	_	_
6	signs	sign	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nsubj:pass	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	dogs	dog	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj	_	_
9	gave	give	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	acl:relcl	_	_
10	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	aux:pass	_	_
11	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	12	advmod	_	_
12	understood	understand	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
13	by	by	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	master	master	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl:agent	_	_
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **give** | past | the dogs | whatever signs *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent sign=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **understand** | past · passive | dogs's master | whatever signs |  | this chase |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer subject=Stimulus |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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