---
title: “He will be asked to outrun me,” he thundered. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “He will be asked to outrun me,” he thundered. Who acts: stranger. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I, 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/pg2892/48/46/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter I, sentence 46

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“He will be asked to outrun me,” he thundered.

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**Who acts:** stranger · **What happens:** ask, outrun, thunder · **To what, where:** stranger, Fionn

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter I. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (stranger), 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:pg2892:48:46
# text = “He will be asked to outrun me,” he thundered.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	aux:pass	_	_
5	asked	ask	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	12	advcl	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	outrun	outrun	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	_
8	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	thundered	thunder	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 | **ask** *speech: ask* *in a quote* | future · passive |  | stranger |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S\_INF»: subject=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **outrun** *not said to happen, in a quote* | to-infinitive | stranger *not said here* | Fionn |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **thunder** | past | stranger |  |  |  |  |  | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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