---
title: “They seemed to be with it,” said the servant humbly — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “They seemed to be with it,” said the servant humbly Who acts: dogs, 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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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter IV, sentence 8

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“They seemed to be with it,” said the servant humbly

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**Who acts:** dogs, servant · **What happens:** seem, be, say · **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 (dogs, 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:pg2892:36:8
# text = “They seemed to be with it,” said the servant humbly
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	seemed	seem	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	ccomp	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
5	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	cop	_	_
6	with	with	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	servant	servant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	humbly	humbly	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **seem** *in a quote* | past | dogs *= dog* |  |  |  |  |  | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **is** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | dogs *= dog* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | with master | tree rules |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the servant |  |  |  |  | humbly *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=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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