---
title: Fear fell llke night around the Fianna, and they stood with slack kn… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Fear fell llke night around the Fianna, and they stood with slack knees and hanging hands waiting for death. Who acts: Fear, face, hands. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VIII, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter VIII, sentence 19

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Fear fell llke night around the Fianna, and they stood with slack knees and hanging hands waiting for death.

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**Who acts:** Fear, face, hands · **What happens:** fall, stand, hang, wait · **To what, where:** Fianna, hands

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter VIII. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Fear, face, hands), 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:pg2892:55:19
# text = Fear fell llke night around the Fianna, and they stood with slack knees and hanging hands waiting for death.
1	Fear	fear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	fell	fall	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	llke	llke	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl:unmarked	_	_
5	around	around	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	Fianna	Fianna	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
12	with	with	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	slack	slack	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	_
14	knees	knee	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obl	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
16	hanging	hang	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	11	conj	_	_
17	hands	hand	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	obj	_	_
18	waiting	wait	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	17	acl	_	_
19	for	for	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	death	death	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fall** | past | Fear |  |  | the Fianna | night |  | vn occur-48.3 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme around fianna=Location |
| 2 | **stand** | past | face |  |  |  |  | with slack knees | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **hang** | gerund | face *not said here* | hands |  |  |  |  | vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent hand=Patient |
| 4 | **wait** | gerund | hands *not said here* |  |  |  |  | for death | vn exist-47.1 «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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