---
title: But who knows when the sky will fall?” — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But who knows when the sky will fall?” Who acts: sky. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter II, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter II, sentence 31

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But who knows when the sky will fall?”

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**Who acts:** sky · **What happens:** know, fall

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter II. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sky), 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:pg2892:57:31
# text = But who knows when the sky will fall?”
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	3	nsubj	_	_
3	knows	know	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	8	mark	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	sky	sky	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
7	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	fall	fall	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **know** | present |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **fall** | future | the sky |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3 «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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