---
title: But before answering the Carl’s shape changed into one of splendour… — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But before answering the Carl’s shape changed into one of splendour and delight. 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 30

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But before answering the Carl’s shape changed into one of splendour and delight.

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**What happens:** answer, change · **To what, where:** shape

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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: 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:pg2892:55:30
# text = But before answering the Carl’s shape changed into one of splendour and delight.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
2	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
3	answering	answer	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	advcl	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	Carl	Carl	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	’s	's	PART	POS	_	5	case	_	_
7	shape	shape	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
8	changed	change	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	into	into	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	8	obl	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	splendour	splendour	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	delight	delight	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | gerund |  | the Carl's shape |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent shape=Eventuality |
| 2 | **change** | past |  |  |  |  |  | into one of splendour and delight *result* | vn turn-26.6.1-1 «NP.patient V PP.result»: agent=Patient into one=Result |

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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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