---
title: Here were two crouching against each other, looking for a soft place… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Here were two crouching against each other, looking for a soft place to hit. Who acts: two. 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/pg2892/46/63/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter II, sentence 63

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Here were two crouching against each other, looking for a soft place to hit.

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**Who acts:** two · **What happens:** crouch, look, hit · **To what, where:** each

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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 (two), 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:pg2892:46:63
# text = Here were two crouching against each other, looking for a soft place to hit.
1	Here	here	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	_
2	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	4	nsubj	_	_
4	crouching	crouch	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	against	against	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	each	each	DET	DT	ExtPos=PRON|PronType=Rcp	4	obl	_	_
7	other	other	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	fixed	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
9	looking	look	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	conj	_	_
10	for	for	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	soft	soft	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	place	place	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	hit	hit	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **crouch** | past · progressive | two |  |  | each; here |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme against each=Location |
| 2 | **look** | gerund | two *not said here* |  |  |  |  | for a soft place | vn rummage-35.5 «NP V PP.location PP.theme»: agent=Agent for place=Theme |
| 3 | **hit** | to-infinitive | two *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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