---
title: But terror gripped with sudden fingers at Becfola’s heart. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But terror gripped with sudden fingers at Becfola’s heart. Who acts: terror. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter V, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter V, sentence 14

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But terror gripped with sudden fingers at Becfola’s heart.

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**Who acts:** terror · **What happens:** grip · **To what, where:** heart

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter V. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (terror), 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:pg2892:44:14
# text = But terror gripped with sudden fingers at Becfola’s heart.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	terror	terror	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	gripped	grip	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
4	with	with	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	sudden	sudden	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	fingers	finger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	_
7	at	at	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
8	Becfola	Becfola	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’s	's	PART	POS	_	8	case	_	_
10	heart	heart	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **grip** | participle | terror |  |  | Becfola's heart |  | with sudden fingers | vn touch-20-1 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent with finger=Instrument |

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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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