---
title: “You can’t fight,” he mumbled, “with a loose shoe or a loose tooth.” — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “You can’t fight,” he mumbled, “with a loose shoe or a loose tooth.” Who acts: You, 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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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter II, sentence 66

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“You can’t fight,” he mumbled, “with a loose shoe or a loose tooth.”

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**Who acts:** You, two · **What happens:** not fight, mumble · **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 (You, 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:pg2892:46:66
# text = “You can’t fight,” he mumbled, “with a loose shoe or a loose tooth.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	fight	fight	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	mumbled	mumble	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
11	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	with	with	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	loose	loose	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	shoe	shoe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
16	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
18	loose	loose	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	tooth	tooth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	19	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	19	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **fight** *in a quote* | can | You |  |  |  |  |  | vn battle-36.4-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **mumble** *speech: other* | past | two |  |  |  |  | with a loose shoe or a loose tooth | 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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