---
title: That is a silly riddle,” he burbled. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: That is a silly riddle,” he burbled. Who acts: That, Carl. 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 25

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That is a silly riddle,” he burbled.

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**Who acts:** That, Carl · **What happens:** be, burble · **To what, where:** silly riddle

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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 (That, Carl), 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:pg2892:52:25
# text = That is a silly riddle,” he burbled.
1	That	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	5	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	silly	silly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	riddle	riddle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	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	burbled	burble	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | That | a silly riddle |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **burble** *in a quote* | past | Carl | a silly riddle *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent riddle=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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- ← previous: [sentence 24](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/52/24/)
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