---
title: “They took her by the throat--” the shivering servant whispered. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “They took her by the throat--” the shivering servant whispered. Who acts: hounds, shivering servant. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IV, 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/pg2892/36/26/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter IV, sentence 26

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“They took her by the throat--” the shivering servant whispered.

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**Who acts:** hounds, shivering servant · **What happens:** take, whisper · **To what, where:** Fionn · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IV. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (hounds, shivering servant), 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:pg2892:36:26
# text = “They took her by the throat--” the shivering servant whispered.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	by	by	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	throat	throat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	shivering	shivering	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	servant	servant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
13	whispered	whisper	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** *in a quote* | past | hounds *= hound* | Fionn |  |  |  | by the throat | vn characterize-29.2 «NP V NP to be ADJ»: agent=Agent she=Theme clause=Attribute |
| 2 | **whisper** *speech: assert* | past | the shivering servant |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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