---
title: “There is not even a bird up,” he murmured. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “There is not even a bird up,” he murmured. Who acts: bird, companion. 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/pg2892/41/12/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter II, sentence 12

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“There is not even a bird up,” he murmured.

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**Who acts:** bird, companion · **What happens:** be up, murmur · **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 (bird, companion), 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:pg2892:41:12
# text = “There is not even a bird up,” he murmured.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	3	expl	_	_
3	is	be	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	ccomp	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	7	advmod	_	_
5	even	even	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
8	up	up	ADP	RP	_	3	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	murmured	murmur	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be up** *in a quote* | present | a bird |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **murmur** *speech: other* | past | companion |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «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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- ← previous: [sentence 11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/41/11/)
- next →: [sentence 13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/41/13/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter II](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/41/)