---
title: “I used to live,” he said, “in a wide, beautiful place. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “I used to live,” he said, “in a wide, beautiful place. Who acts: I, he. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VII, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter VII, sentence 1

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“I used to live,” he said, “in a wide, beautiful place.

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**Who acts:** I, he · **What happens:** use, live, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VII. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, he), 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:pg2892:39:1
# text = “I used to live,” he said, “in a wide, beautiful place.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	used	use	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	ccomp	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	live	live	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
11	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	17	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
14	wide	wide	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
16	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	place	place	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **use** *in a quote* | past | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **live** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | I *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | he |  |  |  |  |  | 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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