---
title: “I could not get at him in time or---” — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “I could not get at him in time or---” Who acts: great. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter III, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter III, sentence 22

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“I could not get at him in time or---”

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**Who acts:** great · **What happens:** not get

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter III. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (great), 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:pg2892:47:22
# text = “I could not get at him in time or---”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	get	get	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	at	at	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obl	_	_
8	in	in	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
10	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	---	---	PUNCT	:	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **get** *in a quote* | could | great |  |  |  | time | at great | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer |

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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 21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/47/21/)
- next →: [sentence 23](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/47/23/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter III](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/47/)