---
title: “By my hand,” said Fionn in mortal distress, “I marvel who that man… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “By my hand,” said Fionn in mortal distress, “I marvel who that man can be!” Who acts: Fionn. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter II, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/34/31/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter II, sentence 31

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“By my hand,” said Fionn in mortal distress, “I marvel who that man can be!”

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**Who acts:** Fionn · **What happens:** say, marvel, be · **To what, where:** mortal distress · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter II. 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:pg2892:34:31
# text = “By my hand,” said Fionn in mortal distress, “I marvel who that man can be!”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	By	by	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	hand	hand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
7	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	Fionn	Fionn	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
9	in	in	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	mortal	mortal	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	distress	distress	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
13	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
15	marvel	marvel	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	conj	_	_
16	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	20	nsubj	_	_
17	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	18	det	_	_
18	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nsubj	_	_
19	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
20	be	be	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: express* | past | Fionn |  |  | mortal distress |  | by my hand | vn pronounce-29.3.1 «NP V NP PP.manner»: agent=Agent in distress=Manner |
| 2 | **marvel** *in a quote* | present | Fionn |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **can** *in a quote* | can |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=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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